In their own separate places sat solitary girls and women who sought neither yet.
Bel Bree was one.
The little room which had been home while Aunt Blin lived there with her, was suddenly become only a dreary, lonely lodging-room. Cheeps and Bartholomew were there, chirping and purring, the sun was shining in; the things were all hers, for Aunt Blin had written one broad, straggling, unsteady line upon a sheet of paper the last day she lived, when the fever and confusion had ebbed away out of her brain as life ebbed slowly back, beaten from its outworks by disease, toward her heart, and she lay feebly, but clearly, conscious.
"I give all I leave in the world to my niece Belinda Bree."
"Kellup" came down and buried his sister, and "looked into things;" concluded that "Bel was pretty comfortable, and with good folks,—Mrs. Pimminy and Miss Smalley; 'sposed she calc'lated to keep on, now; she could come back if she wanted to, though."
Bel did not want to. She would stay here a little while, at any rate, and think. So Kellup went back into New Hampshire.
There was a little money laid up since Miss Bree and Bel had been together; Bel could get along, she thought, till work began again. But it was no longer living; it would not be living then; it would be only work and solitude. She was like a great many others of them now; girls without tie or belonging,—holding on where they could. Elise Mokey had said to her,—"See if you could help yourself if you hadn't Aunt Blin!" and now she began to look forward against that great, dark "If."
Everything had come together. If work had kept on, there would have been these little savings to fall back upon when earnings did not quite meet outlay. But now she should use them up before work came. And what did it signify, anyhow? All the comfort—all the meaning of it—was gone.
They were all kind to her; Miss Smalley sat with her evenings, till Bel wished she would have the wiser kindness to go away and let her be miserable, just a little while.
Morris Hewland knocked at the door one afternoon when the music-mistress was out, giving her lessons.