‘I have got what I wanted at last,’ Beatrix answered evasively. ‘What can you have in all those little parcels?’ ‘Perfumery--in most of them. And now I am going to the Repository to buy something for your small brothers and sisters.’ The Repository was a kind of bazaar in Tower Gate, where there was a large selection of useless articles at any price from sixpence to a guinea. Beatrix loaded herself with popular parlour games, Conversation Cards, Royal Geographical Games, and Kings of England--games which no one but a drivelling idiot could play more than once without being conscious of a tendency to softening of the brain--for the young Scratchells. She bought a handsome workbasket for the industrious house-mother. She bought scent bottles and thimble cases for the girls, knives and pocket-books for the boys. ‘Upon my word, Beatrix, you are too good,’ exclaimed Bella, when she heard the destination of these objects. ‘Do you suppose that money can give me any better pleasure than to make other people happy with it, if I can?’ answered Beatrix. ‘It will never make me happy.’ CHAPTER XVIII. A WITNESS FROM THE GRAVE. THE two girls at the Water House lived their solitary life all through the dark week before Christmas. They read a great deal; Bella confining herself to the novels from the Great Yafford library, Beatrix reading those books which she believed were to fit her for companionship with Cyril Culverhouse in the days to come. They did not find so much to say to each other as friends of such long standing might have been expected to find. But Beatrix was by nature reserved about those things nearest her heart, and her cloistered life gave her little else to talk about. On the dusky winter afternoons they went up to the lumber-room, and had a feast of music at the old piano; Bella singing prettily in a clear soprano voice--thin but not unmelodious--Beatrix playing church music with the touch of a player in whom music was a natural expression of thought and feeling, and not a laboriously acquired art. Very rarely could Beatrix be persuaded to sing, but when she did uplift her fresh young voice, the rich contralto tones were like the sound of an organ, and even Bella’s shallow soul was moved by the simple melodies of the Psalter of those days. ‘As pants the hart for cooling streams, When heated in the chase.’ Or, ‘With one consent let all the earth To God their cheerful voices raise.’ ‘Has Mr. Culverhouse ever heard you sing?’ inquired Bella. ‘Never. Where should he hear me? I never sing anywhere but in this room.’ ‘And in church.’ ‘Yes, of course, in church. But I do not think even Cyril could distinguish my voice out of a whole congregation.’ ‘He might,’ said Bella, ‘all the rest sing through their noses.’