ucked Jane under the chin. Jane giggled,
then made a sign; and there was Mrs. Caldwell looking from one to the
other.

To Beth's recollection it seemed as if she had rapidly acquired the
experiences of this first period. Each incident that she remembered is
apparently trifling in itself, but who can say of what significance as
an indication? In those first few years, had there been any there with
intelligence to interpret, they probably would have found foreshadowings
of all she might be, and do, and suffer; and that would have been the
time to teach her. To me, therefore, these earliest impressions are more
interesting than much that occurred to her in after life, and I have
carefully collected them in the hope of finding some clue in them to
what followed. In several instances it seems to me that the impression
left by some chance observation or incident on her baby mind, made it
possible for her to do many things in after life which she certainly
never would have done but for those early influences. It would be
affectation, therefore, to apologise for such detail. Nothing can be
trivial or insignificant that tends to throw light on the mysterious
growth of our moral and intellectual being. Many a cramped soul that
struggles on in after years, vainly endeavouring to rise on a broken
wing, might, had the importance of such seeming trifles in its
development been recognised, have won its way upward from the first,
untrammelled and uninjured. It was a Jesuit, was it not, who said: "Give
me the child until it is six years old; after that you can do as you
like with it." That is the time to make an indelible impression of
principles upon the mind. In the first period of life, character is a
blossom that should be carefully touched; in the second the petals
fall, and the fruit sets; it is hard and acrid then until the third
period, when, if things go well, it will ripen on the bough, and be
sweet and wholesome--if ill, it will drop off immediately, and rot upon
the ground.

Beth was a combative child, always at war with Jane. There was a great
battle fought about a big black velvet bonnet that Beth wanted to wear
one day. Beth screamed and kicked and scratched and bit, and finally
went out in the bonnet triumphantly, and found herself standing alone
on the edge of a great green world dotted with yellow gorse. A hot,
wide dusty road stretched miles away in front of her; and at an
infinite distance overhead was the blue sky