Yet she had sufficient curiosity about his room to run up to it with the least possible delay, and make a close inspection of its contents. It was tastefully tho economically furnished, and very neatly arranged. There were shelves and stands of books, English, French, and Italian; and in a portfolio on the writing-table there were sheets upon sheets of memoranda and calculations in figures, evidently referring to the Boffin property. On that table also, carefully backed with canvas, varnished, mounted, and rolled like a map, was the placard descriptive of the murdered man who had come from afar to be her husband. She shrank from this ghostly surprize, and felt quite frightened as she rolled and tied it up again. Peeping about here and there, she came upon a print, a graceful head of a pretty woman, elegantly framed, hanging in the corner by the easy chair. "Oh, indeed, Sir!" said Bella, after stopping to ruminate before it. "Oh, indeed, Sir! I fancy I can guess whom you think that's like. But I'll tell you what it's much more like--your impudence!" Having said which she decamped: not solely because she was offended, but because there was nothing else to look at. "Now, Ma," said Bella, reappearing in the kitchen with some remains of a blush, "you and Lavvy think magnificent me fit for nothing, but I intend to prove the contrary. I mean to be cook to-day." "Hold!" rejoined her majestic mother. "I can not permit it. Cook in that dress!" "As for my dress, Ma," returned Bella, merrily searching in a dresser-drawer, "I mean to apron it and towel it all over the front; and as to permission, I mean to do without." "You cook?" said Mrs. Wilfer. "You who never cooked when you were at home?" "Yes, Ma," returned Bella; "that is precisely the state of the case." She girded herself with a white apron, and busily with knots and pins contrived a bib to it, coming close and tight under her chin, as if it had caught her round the neck to kiss her. Over this bib her dimples looked delightful, and under it her pretty figure not less so. "Now, Ma," said Bella, pushing back her hair from her temples with both hands, "what's first?" "First," returned Mrs. Wilfer solemnly, "if you persist in what I can not but regard as conduct utterly incompatible with the equipage in which you arrived--" ("Which I do, Ma.") "First, then, you put the fowls down to the fire." "To--be--sure!" cried Bella; "and flour them, and twirl them around, and there they go!" sending them spinning at a great rate. "What's next, Ma?" "Next," said Mrs. Wilfer with a wave of her gloves, expressive of abdication under protest from the culinary throne, "I would recommend examination of the bacon in the saucepan on the fire, and also of the potatoes by the application of a fork. Preparation of the greens will further become necessary if you persist in this unseemly demeanor." "As of course I do, Ma."