“Bella,” said little Kitty, after a short silence.

“Call your own poor Bella, your Bella, dear,” the housemaid besought her.

“My Bella, then.”

“Bless your considerate heart!” said the housemaid.

“If you would not mind leaving me, I should not mind being left.  I am not afraid to stay in the house alone.  And you need not be uneasy on my account, for I would be very careful to do no harm.”

“O!  As to harm, you more than sweetest, if not a liberty,” exclaimed the housemaid, in a rapture, “your Bella could trust you anywhere, being so steady, and so answerable.  The oldest head in this house (me and Cook says), but for its bright hair, is Miss Kimmeens.  But no, I will not leave you; for you would think your Bella unkind.”

“But if you are my Bella, you must go,” returned the child.

“Must I?” said the housemaid, rising, on the whole with alacrity.  “What must be, must be, Miss Kimmeens.  Your own poor Bella acts according, though unwilling.  But go or stay, your own poor Bella loves you, Miss Kimmeens.”

It was certainly go, and not stay, for within five minutes Miss Kimmeens’s own poor Bella—­so much improved in point of spirits as to have grown almost sanguine on the subject of her brother-in-law—­went her way, in apparel that seemed to have been expressly prepared for some festive occasion.  Such are the changes of this fleeting world, and so short-sighted are we poor mortals!

When the house door closed with a bang and a shake, it seemed to Miss Kimmeens to be a very heavy house door, shutting her up in a wilderness of a house.  But, Miss Kimmeens being, as before stated, of a self-reliant and methodical character, presently began to parcel out the long summer-day before her.

And first she thought she would go all over the house, to make quite sure that nobody with a great-coat on and a carving-knife in it, had got under one of the beds or into one of the cupboards.  Not that she had ever before been troubled by the image of anybody armed with a great-coat and a carving-knife, but that it seemed to have been shaken into existence by the shake and the bang of the great street-door, reverberating through the solitary house.  So, little Miss Kimmeens looked under the five empty beds of the five departed pupils, and looked, under her own bed, and looked under Miss Pupford’s bed, and looked under Miss Pupford’s assistants bed.  And when she had done this, and was making the tour of the cupboards, the disagreeable thought came into her young head, What a very alarming thing it would be to find somebody with a mask on, like Guy Fawkes, hiding bolt upright in a corner and pretending not to be alive!  However, Miss Kimmeens having finished her inspection without making any such uncomfortable discovery, sat down in her tidy little manner to needlework, and began stitching away at a great rate.