once, to somebody!

Ah, little Bel! behind all her cosy, practical living--all her busy
work and contentedness--all her bright notions of what might be
possible, for the better, in things that concerned her class,--she
had her little, vague, bewildering flashes of vision, in which she
saw impossible things; things that might happen in a book, things
that must be so beautiful if they ever did really happen!

A step went up and down the stairs and along the passage by her
aunt's room, day by day, that she had learned to notice every time
it came. A face had glanced in upon her now and then, when the door
stood open for coolness in the warm September weather, when they
had been obliged to have a fire to make the tea, or to heat an iron
to press out seams in work that they were doing. One or two days of
each week, they had taken work home. On those days, they did,
perhaps, their own little washing or ironing, besides; sewing
between whiles, and taking turns, and continuing at their needles
far on into the night. Once Mr. Hewland had come in, to help Aunt
Blin with a blind that was swinging by a single hinge, and which she
was trying, against a boisterous wind, to reset with the other.
After that, he had always spoken to them when he met them. He had
opened and shut the street-door for them, standing back,
courteously, with his hat in his hand, to let them pass.

Aunt Blin,--dear old simple, kindly-hearted Aunt Blin, who believed
cats and birds,--_her_ cat and bird, at least,--might be thrown
trustfully into each other's company, if only she impressed it
sufficiently upon the quadruped's mind from the beginning, that the
bird was "very, _very_ precious,"--thought Mr. Hewland was "such a
nice young man."

And so he was. A nice, genial, well-meaning, well-bred gentleman;
above anything ignoble, or consciously culpable, or common. His
danger lay in his higher tendencies. He had artistic tastes; he was
a lover of all grace and natural sweetness; no line of beauty could
escape him. More than that, he drew toward all that was most
genuine; he cared nothing for the elegant artificialities among
which his social position placed him. He had been singularly
attracted by this little New Hampshire girl, fresh and pretty as a
wild rose, and full of bright, quaint ways and speech, of which he
had caught glimpses and fragments in their near neighborhood. Now
and then, from her open window up to his had come her gay, sweet
laugh; or