y way, there was a great to-do, and her aunt grew so angry about it that
Bella soon gave up attempting. It grieved her dreadfully, though.
The home had been so different when her mother was alive, so neat and
pretty, and all of them so happy.

There had rarely been any scolding, and certainly there was never any
grumbling about the work.

"Why, work is pleasure, if you take it in the right spirit," Mrs. Hender
used to say, cheerfully; "it means life and happiness--but everything
depends, of course, on the spirit in which you take it."

Certainly Aunt Emma did not take it in 'the right spirit.' She was always
grumbling, and never what you would call cheerful. If she had to go up
the few stairs to the bedrooms, she grumbled, and if she had to go to the
door to answer a knock, she grumbled. If the children used an extra cup,
or the windows got dirty, or the steps muddy, she complained bitterly of
the hardship it was to her. And few things are harder to bear than to
have to live with a perpetual grumbler, to listen to constant complaints,
--especially, too, if the grumbler will not let any one help her to do the
work she grumbles so much about. A grumbler spoils every one's pleasure,
and gets none herself; and the worst of it is, it is a disease that grows
on one terribly.

In the Henders' case it was doing great harm, as Bella was old enough to
see. Her father had always, in the old days, come home after his work,
and, after they had all had a cosy meal together, had worked in the garden
through the summer evenings, or, in the winter, sat by the fire reading
the paper or a book to his wife while she sewed. He had long since ceased
all that, though, for one can't sit and read in any comfort in a kitchen
that's all of a muddle, and to a woman who is grumbling all the time; and
soon he found there was a cosy, quiet resting-place at the 'Red Lion,'
with plenty of cheerfulness and good temper, and no grumbling.

The children, too, never came indoors if they could stay out, and as Aunt
Emma complained of their noise if they played in the garden, they
naturally went farther away, if they could manage to escape.

But for Bella, this was not so easy. She was useful, though her aunt
would never admit it, and she liked to have her within call. There was
nowhere that Bella cared to go, except to Mrs. Langley's, farther down the
lane, and thither Miss Hender did not allow her to go very often, though
no one knew why.