studying her fingernails or watching the bath with genial interest.
Molly found herself actually lacking in the strength of mind to exact
that Belle stand silently near on these occasions, and so listened to a
great many of Belle's confidences. Belle at home; Belle in the high
school; Belle trying a position in Robbins's candy store and not liking
it because she was not used to freshness--all these Belles became
familiar to Molly. Grewsome sicknesses, famous local crimes, gossip,
weddings--Belle touched upon them all; and Molly was ashamed to find it
all interesting, it spite of herself. One day Belle told Molly of Joe
Rogers, and Joe figured daily in the narratives thereafter--Joe, who
drove a carriage, a motor, or a hay wagon, as the occasion required,
for his uncle who owned a livery stable, but whose ambition was to buy
out old Scanlon, the local undertaker, and to marry Belle.

"Joe knows more about embalming than even Owens of Napa does," confided
Belle. "He's got every plat in the cemetery memorized--and, his uncle
having carriages and horses, it would work real well; but Scanlon wants
three thousand for the business and goodwill."

"I wish he had it and you this minute!" Molly would think. But when she
opened Timmy's bureau drawers, to find little suits and coats and socks
in snowy, exquisite order; when Timmy, trim, sweet, and freshly clad,
appeared for breakfast every morning, his fat hand in Belle's, and
"Dea' Booey"--as he called her--figuring prominently in his limited
vocabulary, Molly weakened again.

"Is he mad this morning?" Belle would ask in a whisper before Jerry
appeared. "Say, listen! You just let him think I broke the decanter!"
she suggested one day in loyal protection of Molly. "Why, I think the
world and all of Mr. Tressady!" she assured Molly, when reproved for
speaking of him in this way. "Wasn't it the luckiest thing in the
world--my coming up that day?" she would demand joyously over and over.
Her adoption of and by the family of Tressady was--to her, at
least--complete.

In January Uncle George Tressady's estate was finally distributed, and
this meant great financial ease at Rising Water. Belle, Molly said, was
really getting worse and worse as she became more and more at home; and
the time had come to get a nice trained nurse--some one who could keep
a professional eye on Timmy, be a companion to Molly, and who would be
quiet and refined, and gentle in her speech.

"And not a hint t