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. Mrs. Langley, or 'Aunt Maggie,' as the children had been taught to call her, had been their mother's greatest friend and nearest neighbour, and during their mother's lifetime they had felt almost as much at home in her house as in their own. Little Margaret, indeed, had been called after her. Altogether life was very, very different now, and to Bella's mind the present seemed anything but a happy time. She sat on the step to-day, and looked soberly at the sky. The weather was dull and gloomy, with a moisture in the air which would entirely keep the clothes from drying; and a bad drying day is in itself enough to try the temper of the most amiable of washerwomen. "Oh, I do wish the sun would shine," she thought anxiously; "it would make such a difference." Bella spent her days in a state of mingled hope and dread--hope that things would happen to please her aunt, and dread of things happening to ruffle her.