“Not if they are properly managed.  You might leave that part to me.  And you need not name any sum.  I shall see that all your expenses are covered.  Have you a private cupboard in your bedroom?  Unlock it every Monday.  That’s all you need do.  You can give out to all your friends that you have received me as a visitor, because you were kind to me, and I wanted to come back to Northbury so badly.”

After considerable more parley on both sides, the matter was arranged, and who more cheerful than Mrs. Bell as she tripped upstairs to prepare Matty’s room for her guest.  She was quite obliged to Matty now for having left her bed, for the thought of that little secret hoard, which Monday by Monday she might collect, and no one be the wiser, had filled her heart with rejoicing.  So she helped Hannah to spread Josephine’s bed with her finest linen sheets, and altogether she made the little chamber cosy and pleasant for its new inmate.  All signs of poor Matty’s illness were removed, and that young lady’s possessions were hastily carried into her sisters’ joint bedroom.  Here they would be anything but wanted or appreciated but what cared Mrs. Bell for that?

Mrs. Meadowsweet, meanwhile, was having a somewhat exciting time.  Beatrice was engaged.  That event had taken place which the widow had only thought about as a distant and possible contingency.  Captain Bertram had himself come to his future mother-in-law, and said a few words with such grace and real feeling that the old lady’s warm heart was touched.  She laid her hands within those of the handsome lad, and blessed him, and kissed him.

She was not a woman who could see far beneath the surface, and she thought Loftus Bertram worthy even of Beatrice.  Beatrice herself said very little on the subject.

“Yes, I will marry him,” she said once to her mother.  “I have made up my mind, and I will do it.  They want the wedding to be soon.  Let it be soon.  Where’s the use of lingering over these things.”

“You speak somehow, Trixie, I mean Bee, my girl, as if you didn’t—­didn’t quite like it,” said the mother, then a trace of anxiety coming into her smooth, contented voice:  “You shan’t have him, I mean he shan’t have you, unless you want him with your whole heart, Bee, my darling.”

“Mother,” said Beatrice, kneeling down by her, and putting her arms round her neck, “it is not given to all girls to want a thing with their whole heart.  I have always been happy, always filled, always content.  Therefore I go away without any special sense of rejoicing.  But oh, not unhappily—­oh, far from that.”

“You’re sure, Trixie—­you are speaking the whole truth to your own mother?  Your words are sober to belong to a young girl who is soon to be a bride.  Somehow I wasn’t like that when your father came for me.”

“No two girls are alike, mother.  I speak the sober truth, the plain, honest truth, when I tell you that I am happy.  Still, my happiness is not unmixed when I think of leaving you.”