her neighbours,
was an object of envy rather than of pity; for it could not easily be
understood by people generally, how the breaking-up of her house seemed
to Miss Bethia like the breaking-up of all things, and that she felt
like a person lost, and friendless, and helpless for a little while.
But there, was a bright side to the matter, she was, by and by, willing
to acknowledge. She knew too well the value of money--had worked too
hard for all she had, not to feel some come complacency in the handsome
sum lodged in the bank in her name by the obnoxious company.

It is a great thing to have money, most people think, and Miss Bethia
might have had a home in any house in Gourlay that summer if she chose.
But she knew that would not suit anybody concerned long; so, when it was
suggested to her that she should purchase the house which the departure
of Mrs Inglis and her children left vacant, she considered the matter
first, and then accomplished it. It was too large for her, of course,
but she let part of it to Debby Stone, who brought her invalid sister
there, and earned the living of both by working as a tailoress. Miss
Bethia did something at that, too, and lived as sparingly as she had
always done, and showed such shrewdness in investing her money, and such
firmness in exacting all that was her due, that some people, who would
have liked to have a voice in the management of her affairs, called her
hard, and a screw, and wondered that an old woman like her should care
so much for what she took so little good of.

But Miss Bethia took a great deal of good out of her money, or out of
the use she made of it, and meant to make of it; and a great many people
in Gourlay, and out of it, knew that she was neither hard nor a screw.

And the book-case still stood up-stairs, and Miss Bethia took excellent
care of the books, keeping the curtains drawn and the room dark, except
when she had visitors. Then the light was let in, and she grew eloquent
over the books and the minister, and the good he had done her in past
days; but no one ever heard from her lips how the books came to be left
in her care, or what was to become of them at last.

CHAPTER NINE.

May has come again, and the Inglises had been living a whole year in
Singleton; or, rather, they had been living in a queer little house just
out of Singleton. The house itself was well enough, and the place had
been a pretty place once; but Miss Bethia's enemies--the g