ley on both sides, the matter was arranged,
and who more cheerful than Mrs. Bell as she tripped upstairs to prepare
Matty's room for her guest. She was quite obliged to Matty now for
having left her bed, for the thought of that little secret hoard, which
Monday by Monday she might collect, and no one be the wiser, had filled
her heart with rejoicing. So she helped Hannah to spread Josephine's bed
with her finest linen sheets, and altogether she made the little chamber
cosy and pleasant for its new inmate. All signs of poor Matty's illness
were removed, and that young lady's possessions were hastily carried
into her sisters' joint bedroom. Here they would be anything but wanted
or appreciated but what cared Mrs. Bell for that?

Mrs. Meadowsweet, meanwhile, was having a somewhat exciting time.
Beatrice was engaged. That event had taken place which the widow had
only thought about as a distant and possible contingency. Captain
Bertram had himself come to his future mother-in-law, and said a few
words with such grace and real feeling that the old lady's warm heart
was touched. She laid her hands within those of the handsome lad, and
blessed him, and kissed him.

She was not a woman who could see far beneath the surface, and she
thought Loftus Bertram worthy even of Beatrice. Beatrice herself said
very little on the subject.

"Yes, I will marry him," she said once to her mother. "I have made up my
mind, and I will do it. They want the wedding to be soon. Let it be
soon. Where's the use of lingering over these things."

"You speak somehow, Trixie, I mean Bee, my girl, as if you
didn't--didn't quite like it," said the mother, then a trace of anxiety
coming into her smooth, contented voice: "You shan't have him, I mean he
shan't have you, unless you want him with your whole heart, Bee, my
darling."

"Mother," said Beatrice, kneeling down by her, and putting her arms
round her neck, "it is not given to all girls to want a thing with their
whole heart. I have always been happy, always filled, always content.
Therefore I go away without any special sense of rejoicing. But oh, not
unhappily--oh, far from that."

"You're sure, Trixie--you are speaking the whole truth to your own
mother? Your words are sober to belong to a young girl who is soon to be
a bride. Somehow I wasn't like that when your father came for me."

"No two girls are alike, mother. I speak the sober truth, the plain,
honest truth, when I tell you that I am