dation in it, no china
cupboard, nothing fit for a lady. She must have it all altered. From
the way she spoke, it seemed to Beth that she blamed her mother for
everything that was wrong.

Mrs. Caldwell said very little. She was suffering from a great
swelling at the back of her neck--an anthrax, the doctor called
it--and was not fit to be about at all, but her indomitable fortitude
kept her up. Mrs. Ellis had stayed to nurse her, and help with the
children. She and Mrs. Caldwell looked at each other and smiled when
the new officer's wife had gone.

"She's a very fine lady indeed, Mrs. Ellis," Mrs. Caldwell said,
sighing wearily.

"Yes, ma'am," Mrs. Ellis answered; "but people who have been used to
things all their lives think less about them."

Mrs. Ellis was very kind to the children, and when wet days kept Beth
indoors, she would stay with her, and study her with interest. She was
thin, precise, low-voiced, quiet in her movements, passionless, loyal;
and every time she took a mouthful at table, she wiped her mouth.

The doctor came every day to dress the abscess on Mrs. Caldwell's
neck, and every day he said that if it had not burst of itself he
should have been obliged to make a deep incision in it in the form of
a cross. Mildred and Beth were always present on these occasions,
fighting to be allowed to hold the basin. Mrs. Ellis wanted to turn
them out, but Mrs. Caldwell said: "Let them stay, poor little bodies;
they like to be with me."

The poor lady, ill as she was, had neither peace nor quiet. The yard
was full of great stones now, and stone-masons hammered at them from
early morning till late at night, chipping them into shape for the
alterations and additions to be made to the house; the loft was full
of carpenters preparing boards for flooring; the yard-gates were
always open, and people came and went as they liked, so that there was
no more privacy for the family. Mildred stayed indoors with her mother
a good deal; but Beth, followed by Bernadine, who had become her
shadow, was continually in the yard among the men, listening,
questioning, and observing. To Beth, at this time, the grown-up people
of her race were creatures with a natural history other than her own,
which she studied with great intelligence and interest, and sometimes
also with disgust; for, although she was so much more with the common
people, as she had been taught to call them, than with her own class,
she did not adopt their stand