ing.

"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!"

"Well, I wouldn't live so. And Aunt Blin wouldn't. I'm afraid she
_didn't_ have other things quite so--corresponding--when she was by
herself; but she had the home comfort. And, truly, now, I shouldn't
wonder if there was real nourishment in just looking round,--at a
red carpet and things,--when you've got 'em all just to your own
mind. You can piece out with--peace!"

For two or three minutes, there was nothing heard after that in Bel
and Elise's corner, but the regular busy click of the machines, as
the tucks ran evenly through. Miss Tonker was hovering in the
neighborhood. But presently, as she moved off, and Elise had a spool
to change, Bel began again.

"Why don't you get up something different? Why couldn't a dozen, or
twenty, take a flat, or a whole house, and have a housekeeper, and
live nice? I believe I could contrive."

Bel was a born contriver. She was a born reformer, as all poets are;
only she did not know yet that she was either. That had been the
real trouble up in New Hampshire. She had her ideals, and she could
not carry them out; so she sat and dreamed of what she would do if
she could. If she might in any way have moulded her home to her own
more delicate instincts, it may be that her step-mother need not
have had to complain that "there was no spunk or snap to her about
anything." It was not in her to "whew round" among tubs and
whey,--to go slap-dash into soapmaking, or the coarse Monday's
washing, when all nicer cares were evaded or forbidden, when chairs
were shoved back against each other into corners, table-cloths left
crooked, and dragging and crumby, drawing the flies,--mantel
ornaments of uncouth odds and ends pushed all awry and one side
during a dusting, and left so,--carpets rough and untidy at the
corners; no touch of prettiness or pleasantness, nothing but clear,
necessary _work_ anywhere. She would have made home _home_; then she
would have worked for it.

Aunt Blin was like her. She would rather sit behind her blinds in
her neat, quiet room of a Sunday, too tired t