"Is he very ill?" asked little Kitty.

"Your poor Bella has her fears so, Miss Kimmeens," returned the
housemaid, with her apron at her eyes. "It was but his inside, it is
true, but it might mount, and the doctor said that if it mounted he
wouldn't answer." Here the housemaid was so overcome that Kitty
administered the only comfort she had ready: which was a kiss.

"If it hadn't been for disappointing Cook, dear Miss Kimmeens," said the
housemaid, "your Bella would have asked her to stay with you. For Cook
is sweet company, Miss Kimmeens, much more so than your own poor Bella."

"But you are very nice, Bella."

"Your Bella could wish to be so, Miss Kimmeens," returned the housemaid,
"but she knows full well that it do not lay in her power this day."

With which despondent conviction, the housemaid drew a heavy sigh, and
shook her head, and dropped it on one side.

"If it had been anyways right to disappoint Cook," she pursued, in a
contemplative and abstracted manner, "it might have been so easy done! I
could have got to my brother-in-law's, and had the best part of the day
there, and got back, long before our ladies come home at night, and
neither the one nor the other of them need never have known it. Not that
Miss Pupford would at all object, but that it might put her out, being
tender-hearted. Hows'ever, your own poor Bella, Miss Kimmeens," said the
housemaid, rousing herself, "is forced to stay with you, and you're a
precious love, if not a liberty."