CHAPTER XV.
In relating so much about her mistresses, I have lately seemed to overlook Elizabeth Hand.
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 to fall chiefly upon her.

She went about her duties as soberly and silently as she had done in her girlhood; even Miss Leaf could not draw her into much demonstrativeness: she was one of those people who never "come out" till they are strongly needed, and then-- But it remained to be proved what this girl would be.
Years afterward Hilary remembered with what a curious reticence Elizabeth used to go about in those days: how she remained as old-fashioned as ever; acquired no London ways, no fripperies of dress or flippancies of manner.

Also, that she never complained of anything; though the discomforts of her lodging-house life must have been great--greater than her mistresses had any idea of at the time.
Slowly, out of her rough, unpliant girlhood, was forming that character of self-reliance and self-control, which, in all ranks, makes of some women the helpers rather than the helped, the laborers rather than the pleasure-seekers; women whose constant lot it seems to be to walk on the shadowed side of life, to endure rather than to enjoy.
Elizabeth had very little actual enjoyment.

She made no acquaintances, and never asked for holidays.