"Let's go to bed," she said.

Her mother took no notice of the suggestion. She sat bolt upright in her
chair; her face had lost its look of bored, weary patience; it flushed
and flickered with resentment.

"I shall send for Aunt Bella," she said.

"Why Aunt Bella?"

"Because I must have someone. Someone of my own."


XIII.

It was three weeks now since the funeral.

Mamma and Aunt Bella sat in the dining-room, one on each side of the
fireplace. Mamma looked strange and sunken and rather yellow in a widow's
cap and a black knitted shawl, but Aunt Bella had turned herself into a
large, comfortable sheep by means of a fleece of white shawl and an
ice-wool hood peaked over her cap.

There was a sweet, inky smell of black things dyed at Pullar's. Mary
picked out the white threads and pretended to listen while Aunt Bella
talked to Mamma in a woolly voice about Aunt Lavvy's friendship with the
Unitarian minister, and Uncle Edward's lumbago, and the unreasonableness
of the working classes.