After the hours were up that afternoon, Miss Tonker called Aunt Blin aside.  She uncovered the large white box in which it lay, unfinished.

“You have a nice room, Miss Bree.  Can you take this home and finish it,—­by Wednesday?  In over-hours, I mean; I shall want you here daytimes, as usual.  It has been tried on; all but for the hanging of the skirt; you can take the measures from the white one. That I shall finish myself.”

Aunt Blin’s voice trembled with humble ecstasy as she answered.  She thanked Miss Tonker in a tone timid with an apprehension of some possible unacceptableness which should disturb or change the favoring grace.

“Certainly, ma’am.  I’ll spread a sheet on the floor, and put a white cloth on the table.  Thank you, ma’am.  Yes; I have a nice room, and nothing gets meddled with.  It’ll be quite safe there.  I’m sure I’m no less than happy to be allowed.  You’re very kind, ma’am.”

Miss Tonker said nothing at all to the meekly nervous outpouring.  She did not snub her, however; that was something.

Miss Bree and her niece, between them, carried home the large box.

On the way, a dream ran through the head of Bel.  She could not help it.

To have this beautiful dress in the house,—­perhaps to have to stand up and be tried to, for the fall of its delicate, rosy trail; with the white cloth on the floor, and the bright light all through the room,—­why it would be almost like a minute of a ball; and what if the door should be open, and somebody should happen to go by, up-stairs?  If she could be so, and be seen so, just one minute, in that blush-colored silk!  She should like to look like that, just once, to somebody!

Ah, little Bel! behind all her cosy, practical living—­all her busy work and contentedness—­all her bright notions of what might be possible, for the better, in things that concerned her class,—­she had her little, vague, bewildering flashes of vision, in which she saw impossible things; things that might happen in a book, things that must be so beautiful if they ever did really happen!

A step went up and down the stairs and along the passage by her aunt’s room, day by day, that she had learned to notice every time it came.  A face had glanced in upon her now and then, when the door stood open for coolness in the warm September weather, when they had been obliged to have a fire to make the tea, or to heat an iron to press out seams in work that they were doing.  One or two days of each week, they had taken work home.  On those days, they did, perhaps, their own little washing or ironing, besides; sewing between whiles, and taking turns, and continuing at their needles far on into the night.  Once Mr. Hewland had come in, to help Aunt Blin with a blind that was swinging by a single hinge, and which she was trying, against a boisterous wind, to reset with the other.  After that, he had always spoken to them when he met them.  He had opened and shut the street-door for them, standing back, courteously, with his hat in his hand, to let them pass.