d away with a fearful misgiving; not for that very
minute, exactly; she hardly supposed Bartholomew would go straight
from the sermon to sin; but for the resistance of evil enticements
hereafter, under Miss Bree's trustful system,--though he walked off
now like a deacon after a benediction,--she trembled in her poor
little heart, and was sorely afraid she could not ever come to love
Aunt Blin's great gray pet as she supposed she ought.

Aunt Blin had not fairly reached the passage-way, Bel had just
emerged from the closet with her hands full of kindlings, and pushed
the door to behind her with her foot, when--crash! bang!--what _had_
happened?

A Boston earthquake? The room was full of a great noise and
scramble. It seemed ever so long before Bel could comprehend and
turn her face toward the centre of it; a second of time has
infinitesimal divisions, all of which one feels and measures in such
a crisis. Then she and Aunt Blin came together at a sharp angle of
incidence in the middle of the room, the kindlings scattered about
the carpet; and there was the corollary to the exhortation. The
overturned cage,--the dragged-off table-cloth,--the clumsy
Bartholomew, big and gray, bewildered, yet tenacious, clinging to
the wires and sprawling all over them on one side with his fearful
bulk, and the tiny green and golden canary flattened out against the
other side within, absolutely plane and prone with the mere smite of
terror.

"You awful wild beast! I _knew_ you didn't mind!" shrieked Bel,
snatching at the little cage from which Bartholomew dropped
discomfited, and chirping to Cheepsie with a vehemence meant to be
reassuring, but failing of its tender intent through frantic
indignation. It is impossible to scold and chirp at once, however
much one may want to do it.

"You dreadful tiger cat!" she repeated. It almost seemed as
if her love for Aunt Blin let loose more desperately her
denunciations. There is something in human nature which turns
most passionately,--if it does turn,--upon one's very own.

"I can't bear you! I never shall! You're a horrid, monstrous,
abominable, great, gray--wolf! I knew you were!"

Miss Bree fairly gasped.

When she got breath, she said slowly, mournfully, "O Bartholomew! I
_thought_ I could have trusted you! _Was_ you a murderer in your
heart all the time? Go away! I've--no--_con_--fidence _in_ you! No
_co-on_--fidence _in_ you, Bartholomew Bree!"

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