ntly been used to being made much of at home.

If he asked her to deliver a Latin oration, it would not have seemed a
more impossible task to bashful Beth, but there was no place to run to,
no Jo to hide behind now, and the poor boy looked so wistfully at her
that she bravely resolved to try.

"What do you like to talk about?" she asked, fumbling over the cards
and dropping half as she tried to tie them up.

"Well, I like to hear about cricket and boating and hunting," said
Frank, who had not yet learned to suit his amusements to his strength.

My heart! What shall I do? I don't know anything about them, thought
Beth, and forgetting the boy's misfortune in her flurry, she said,
hoping to make him talk, "I never saw any hunting, but I suppose you
know all about it."

"I did once, but I can never hunt again, for I got hurt leaping a
confounded five-barred gate, so there are no more horses and hounds for
me," said Frank with a sigh that made Beth hate herself for her
innocent blunder.

"Your deer are much prettier than our ugly buffaloes," she said,
turning to the prairies for help and feeling glad that she had read one
of the boys' books in which Jo delighted.

Buffaloes proved soothing and satisfactory, and in her eagerness to
amuse another, Beth forgot herself, and was quite unconscious of her
sisters' surprise and delight at the unusual spectacle of Beth talking
away to one of the dreadful boys, against whom she had begged
protection.

"Bless her heart! She pities him, so she is good to him," said Jo,
beaming at her from the croquet ground.

"I always said she was a little saint," added Meg, as if there could be
no further doubt of it.

"I haven't heard Frank laugh so much for ever so long," said Grace to
Amy, as they sat discussing dolls and making tea sets out of the acorn
cups.

"My sister Beth is a very fastidious girl, when she likes to be," said
Amy, well pleased at Beth's success. She meant 'facinating', but as
Grace didn't know the exact meaning of either word, fastidious sounded
well and made a good impression.

An impromptu circus, fox and geese, and an amicable game of croquet
finished the afternoon. At sunset the tent was struck, hampers packed,
wickets pulled up, boats loaded, and the whole party floated down the
river, singing at the tops of their voices. Ned, getting sentimental,
warbled a serenade with the pensive refrain...

Alone, alone, ah! Woe, alone,

and at the lines...