Mistress and Maid: A Household Story

She was a rather tall, awkward, and strongly-built girl of about fifteen. This was the first impression the "maid" gave to her "mistresses," the Misses Leaf, when she entered th...

While her anxious mistresses were thus talking her over the servant lay on her humble bed and slept. They knew she did, for they heard her heavy breathing through the thin parti...

Let us linger a little over this chapter of happy love: so sweet, so rare a thing. Aye, most rare: though hundreds continually meet, love, or fancy they do, engage themselves, a...

"IN MEMORY OF SELINA, THE BELOVED WIFE OF PETER ASCOTT, ESQ., OF RUSSELL SQUARE, LONDON, AND DAUGHTER OF THE LATE HENRY LEAF, ESQ., OF THIS TOWN. DIED DECEMBER 24, 1839. AGED 41...

Elizabeth stood at the nursery window, pointing out to little Henry how the lilacs and laburnums were coming into flower in the square below, and speculating with him whether th...

Never was there such a wonderful baby, and never was there such a fuss made over it. Unprejudiced persons might have called it an ugly, weakly little thing; indeed, at first the...

And now I leave Miss Hilary for a time; leave her in, if not happiness, great peace. Peace which, after these stormy months, was an actual paradise of calm to both herself and J...

The week passed by, and Hilary received no ill tidings from home. Incessant occupation kept her from dwelling too much on anxious subjects: besides, she would not have thought i...

By-and-by, moved by their distress, or perhaps feeling that the scape-grace would be safer got rid of if found and dispatched abroad in some decent manner, Mr. Ascott himself to...

"I remember," said Miss Leaf, as they rumbled for the last time through the empty morning streets of poor old Stowbury: "I remember my grandmother telling me that when my grandf...

Following Miss Hilary's earnest advice that every thing should be fair and open, Elizabeth, on the very next day after that happy Whit-Monday, mustered up her courage, asked per...

Next morning, while with that cheerful, unanxious countenance which those about an invalid must learn continually to wear, Elizabeth was trying to persuade her mistress not to r...

Months slipped by; the trees in Burton Crescent had long been all bare; the summer cries of itinerant vegetable dealers and flower sellers had vanished out of the quiet street.-...

Mr. Ascott was sitting half asleep in his solitary dining room, his face rosy with wine, his heart warmed also, probably from the same cause. Not that he was in the least "tipsy...

A household exclusively composed of women has its advantages and its disadvantages. It is apt to become somewhat narrow in judgment, morbid in feeling, absorbed in petty interes...

She was a person easy enough to be overlooked. She never put herself forward, not even now, when Miss Hilary's absence caused the weight of housekeeping and domestic management...

"Missing"--"Lost"--"To--"--all the initials of the alphabet--we read these sort of advertisements in the newspapers; and unless there happens to be in them something intensely p...

Elizabeth got tea ready with unwonted diligence and considerable excitement. Any visitor was a rare occurrence in this very quiet family; but a gentleman visitor--a young gentle...

Miss Balquidder's house was a handsome one, handsomely furnished, and a neat little to aid-servant showed Hilary at once into the dining-parlor, where the mistress sat before a...

Elizabeth spent the greatest part of her holiday in that house, in that room. Nobody interfered with her; nobody asked in what relation she stood to the deceased, or what right...

"With Mr. Peter Ascott!" Hilary was a little surprised; but on second thoughts she found it natural; Selina was glad of any amusement--to her, not only the narrowness but the du...

Common as were the small fends between Ascott and his Aunt Selina, they seldom reached such a catastrophe as that described in my last chapter. Hilary had to fly to the rescue,...

Living in lodgings, not temporarily, but permanently, sitting down to make one's only "home" in Mrs. Jones's parlor or Mrs. Smith's first floor, of which not a stick or a stone...

The Christmas holidays ended, and Ascott left for London. It was the greatest household change the Misses Leaf had known for years, and they missed him sorely. Ascott was not ex...

Time slipped by. Robert Lyon had been away more than three years. But in the monotonous life of the three sisters at Stowbury, nothing was changed. Except, perhaps, Elizabeth, w...

It was not a cheerful morning on which to be married. A dense, yellow, London fog, the like of which the Misses Leaf had never yet seen, penetrated into every corner of the parl...

Aunt Hilary fixed her honest eyes on the lad's face--the lad, so little younger than herself, and yet who at tunes, when he let out sayings such as this, seemed so awfully, so p...

Autumn soon lapsed into winter: Christmas came and went, bringing, not Ascott, as they hoped and he had promised, but a very serious evil in the shape of sundry bills of his, wh...

a boy of nineteen is rather flattering than otherwise. Also, for there is a law even under the blind mystery of likings and fallings in love--a certain weakness in him, that wea...

tickets; he even, after some meditation and knitting of his shaggy grey eyebrows, bolted out with an invitation for the whole family to dinner at Russell Square the following Su...