A very Naughty Girl by L.T. Meade

The one person who might have helped Evelyn was too busy with her own troubles just then to think a great deal about her. Poor Sylvia was visited with a very great dread. Her father's manner was strange; she began to fear that he suspected Jasper's presence in the house. If Jasper left, Sylvia felt that things must come to a crisis; she could not stand the life she had lived before the comfortable advent of this kindly but ill-informed woman. Sylvia was really very much attached to Jasper, and although she argued much over Evelyn, and disagreed strongly with her with regard to the best way to treat this unruly little member of society, Sylvia's very life depended on Jasper's purse and Jasper's tact.

One by one the fowls disappeared, the same boy receiving them over the hedge day by day from Jasper. The boy sold each of the old hens for sixpence, and reaped quite a harvest in consequence. He was all too willing to keep Jasper's secret. Jasper bought tender young cockerels from a neighbor in the village, conveyed them home under her arm, killed them, and dressed them in various and dainty manners for Mr. Leeson's meals. He was loud in his praise of Sylvia, and told her that if the worst came to the worst she could go out as a lady cook.