scraps of her small, husbanded enjoyments to Bel,
what would it be to have her there, to share and make and enlarge
them? To bring young girls home sometimes for a chat, or even a cup
of tea; to fetch books from the library, and read them aloud of a
winter evening, while she stitched on by the gas-light with her
glasses on her little homely old nose? The little old nose radiated
the concentrated delight of the whole diminutive, withered face; the
intense gleam of the small, pale blue eyes that bent themselves
together to a short focus above it, and the eagerness of the thin,
shrunken lips that pursed themselves upward with an expression that
was keener than a smile. Bel laughed, and said she was "all puckered
up into one little admiration point!"

After that, it was of no use to be wise and to make objections.

"I'll take you right in with me, and look after you, if you do!"
said Miss Bree. "And two together, we can housekeep real
comfortable!"

It was as if a new wave of youth, from the far-retreated tide, had
swept back upon the beach sands of her life, to spend its sparkle
and its music upon the sad, dry level. Every little pebble of
circumstance took new color under its touch. Something belonging to
her was still young, strong, hopeful. Bel would be a brightness in
the whole old place. The middle-aged music-mistress would like
her,--perhaps even give her some fragmentary instruction in the
clippings of her time. Mrs. Pimminy, the landlady,--old Mr. Sparrow,
the watch-maker, who went up and down stairs to and from his nest
under the eaves,--the milliner in the second-floor-back,--why, she
would make friends with them all, like the sunshine! There would be
singing in the house! The middle-aged music-mistress did not
sing,--only played. And this would be her doing,--her bringing; it
would be the third-floor-front's glory! The pert girls at the
wareroom would not snub the old maid any more, and shove her into
the meanest corner. She had got a piece of girlhood of her own
again. Let them just see Bel Bree--that was all!

Yet she did set before Bel, conscientiously, the difference between
the free country home and the close, bricked up city.

"There isn't any out-doors there, you know--round the houses; _home_
out-doors; you have to be dressed up and go somewhere, when you go
out. The streets are splendid, and there's lots to look at; but
they're only made to _get through_, you know, after all."

They were sitting