uneasy on my
account, for I would be very careful to do no harm."

"O! As to harm, you more than sweetest, if not a liberty," exclaimed the
housemaid, in a rapture, "your Bella could trust you anywhere, being so
steady, and so answerable. The oldest head in this house (me and Cook
says), but for its bright hair, is Miss Kimmeens. But no, I will not
leave you; for you would think your Bella unkind."

"But if you are my Bella, you _must_ go," returned the child.

"Must I?" said the housemaid, rising, on the whole with alacrity. "What
must be, must be, Miss Kimmeens. Your own poor Bella acts according,
though unwilling. But go or stay, your own poor Bella loves you, Miss
Kimmeens."

It was certainly go, and not stay, for within five minutes Miss
Kimmeens's own poor Bella--so much improved in point of spirits as to
have grown almost sanguine on the subject of her brother-in-law--went her
way, in apparel that seemed to have been expressly prepared for some
festive occasion. Such are the changes of this fleeting world, and so
short-sighted are we poor mortals!

When the house door closed with a bang and a shake, it seemed to Miss
Kimmeens to be a very heavy house door, shutting her up in a wilderness
of a house. But, Miss Kimmeens being, as before stated, of a
self-reliant and methodical character, presently began to parcel out the
long summer-day before her.

And first she thought she would go all over the house, to make quite sure
that nobody with a great-coat on and a carving-knife in it, had got under
one of the beds or into one of the cupboards. Not that she had ever
before been troubled by the image of anybody armed with a great-coat and
a carving-knife, but that it seemed to have been shaken into existence by
the shake and the bang of the great street-door, reverberating through
the solitary house. So, little Miss Kimmeens looked under the five empty
beds of the five departed pupils, and looked, under her own bed, and
looked under Miss Pupford's bed, and looked under Miss Pupford's
assistants bed. And when she had done this, and was making the tour of
the cupboards, the disagreeable thought came into her young head, What a
very alarming thing it would be to find somebody with a mask on, like Guy
Fawkes, hiding bolt upright in a corner and pretending not to be alive!
However, Miss Kimmeens having finished her inspection without making any
such uncomfortable discovery, sat down in her tidy little manner