f I said it my way, you know,
then it wouldn't be Horner--Horner said to cook as 'ow Captain
Caldwell 'ud 'a' gone to law about it, but squire 'e swore if 'e'd let
the matter drop, 'e'd make 'is nevee, Master Jim, as is also 'is
godson, 'is heir, an' so square it; and Captain Caldwell, as was a
real gen'lmon, an' fond of the ladies, tuk 'im at 'is word, an'
furgiv' 'im. But, lardie! don't us know the worth o' Mr. James
Patten's word!"

Aunt Grace Mary had turned very pale.

"Beth," she gasped, "promise me you will never, never, _never_ say a
word about this to your uncle."

"Not likely," said Beth.

"How do you remember these things you hear?"

"Oh, I just think them over again when I go to bed, and then they
stay," Beth answered. "I wouldn't tell you half I hear, though--only
things everybody knows. If you tell secrets, you know, you're a
tell-pie. And I'm not a tell-pie. Now, Bernadine is. She's a regular
tell-pie. It seems as if she couldn't help it; but then she's young,"
Beth added tolerantly.

"Were you ever young, I wonder?" Aunt Grace Mary muttered to herself.

CHAPTER XIII

Meanwhile the English spring advanced in the beautiful gardens of
Fairholm, and was a joy to Beth. Blossoms showered from the
fruit-trees, green leaves unfurled, the birds were in full song, and
the swans curved their long necks in the sunshine, and breasted the
waters of the lake, as if their own grace were a pleasure to them.
Beth was enchanted. Every day she discovered some new wonder--nests in
the hedgerows, lambs in the fields, a foal and its mother in the
paddock, a calf in the byre--more living interests in one week than
she had dreamt of in the whole of her little life. For a happy
interval the scenes which had oppressed her--the desolation, the
sombre colours of the great melancholy mountains, the incessant sound
of the turbulent sea, the shock and roar of angry breakers warring
with the rocks, which had kept her little being all a-throb, braced to
the expectation of calamity--lapsed now into the background of her
recollection, and under the benign influence of these lovelier
surroundings her mind began to expand in the most extraordinary way,
while her further faculty awoke, and gave her glimpses of more
delights than mortal mind could have shown her. "Such nice things," as
she expressed it, "keep coming into my head, and I want to write them
down." Books she flung away impatiently; but the woods and streams,
an