Might I not come and live with you here?
I would pay you well." Mrs.Bell started and blushed.

Caste was a very marked feature in Northbury society, and between the people who let lodgings for money, and those who lived genteelly on their means was a great and awful gulf.
No people were poorer in their way than the Bells, and no one would have more dearly liked to add to her little store of this world's pelf than would poor Mrs.Bell.She could scarcely afford to take a fashionable girl in for nothing, and yet--dared she accept payment?
Bell, if he knew, would never forgive her, and, as to the town, it would simply cut her dead.
The tall girl who was watching Mrs.Bell's face seemed, however, to be able to read her through.

She spoke in a moment in a very gentle and pleading voice: "I understand your position; you are a lady, and you don't like to accept money." "I couldn't do it, my dear.

I couldn't really; Bell, he'd take on awful.
It isn't the custom in Northbury, Miss--Miss Hart." "And I couldn't come to you without paying.

Now, suppose you and I managed it between us and nobody knew." "Oh, Miss Hart, I'd be terrified.