When Matilda Meane came in, she looked as though she thought the world was moved.  She did not exactly dare to order Miss Bree up; but she elbowed about, she pushed her machine this way and that; she behaved like a hen hustled off her nest and not quite making up her mind whether she would go back to it or not.  Miss Bree’s nose grew apprehensive; it drew itself up with a little, visible, trembling gasp,—­her small eyes glanced timidly from under the drawn, puckered lids, it was evidently all she could do to hold her ground.  But Bel had put her there, and loyalty to Bel kept her passive.  It is so much harder for some poor meek things ever to take anything, than it is forever to go without.  Only for love and gratefulness can they ever be made to assume their common human rights.

Presently it had to come out.

Bel was singing away, as she gathered her work together in an opposite quarter of the room, keeping a glance out at her right eye-corner, expectantly.

“Who moved this machine?” asked Matilda Meane, stopping short in her endeavors to make it take up the middle of the window without absolutely rolling it over Aunt Blin’s toes.

“I did, a little,” answered Bel, promptly.  “There was plenty of room for two; and if there hadn’t been, Aunt Blin must have a good light, and have it over her left shoulder, at that.  She’s the oldest person in the room, Miss Meane!”

“She was spoken to yesterday about her buttonholes,” she added, in a lower tone, to Eliza Mokey, as she settled herself in her own seat next that young lady.  “And it was all because she could hardly see.”

“Buttonholes or not,” answered Eliza, who preferred to be called “Elise,” “I’m glad somebody has taken Mat Meane down at last.  She needed it.  I wish you could take her in hand everywhere.  If you boarded at our house”—­

“I shouldn’t,” interrupted Bel, decisively.  “Not under any circumstances, from what you tell of it.”

“That’s all very well to say now; you’re in clover, comparatively.  ‘Chaters’ and real tea,—­and a three-ply carpet!”

Miss Mokey had gone home with Bel and Aunt Blin, one evening lately, when there had been work to finish and they had made a “bee” of it.

“See if you could help yourself if you hadn’t Aunt Blin.”

“Why couldn’t I help myself as well as she?  She had a nice place all alone, before I came.”

“She must have half starved herself to keep it, then.  Stands to reason.  Dollar and a quarter a day, and five dollars a week for your room.  Where’s your muffins, and your Oolong?  Or else, where’s your shoes?—­Where’s that Hamburg edging?”

“We don’t have any Hamburg edging,” said Bel, laughing.

“Nonsense.  You know what I mean.  O, here it is, under all that pique!  For mercy’s sake, won’t Miss Tonker blow?—­Now I get my nine dollars a week, and out of it I pay six for my share of that miserable sky-parlor, and my ends of the crusts and the cheese-parings.  No place to myself for a minute.  Why, I feel mixed up sometimes to that degree that I’d almost like to die, and begin again, to find out who I am!”