at them despondently. Then she took a slate, set
herself the easiest addition sum she could find in Colenso, and did it
wrong. Her mother told her to correct it.

"I wish you would show me how, mamma," Beth pleaded.

"You must find out for yourself," her mother answered.

This was her favourite formula. She had no idea of making the lessons
either easy or interesting to the children. Teaching was a duty she
detested, a time of trial both to herself and to her pupils, to be got
over as soon as possible. The whole proceeding only occupied two or
three dreadful hours of the morning, and then the children were free
for the rest of the day, and so was she.

After lessons they all went out together to the north cliffs, where
Aunt Victoria and Mrs. Caldwell walked to and fro on a sheltered
terrace, while the children played on the sands below. It was a still
day when Beth first saw the sands, and the lonely level and the
tranquil sea delighted her. On her left, white cliffs curved round the
bay like an arm; on her right was the grey and solid old stone pile,
and behind her the mellow red brick houses of the little town
scrambled up an incline from the shore irregularly. Silver sparkles
brightened the hard smooth surface of the sand in the sunshine. The
tide was coming in, and tiny waves advanced in irregular curves, and
broke with a merry murmur. Joy got hold of Beth as she gazed about
her, feeling the beauty of the scene. With the infinite charity of
childhood, she forgave her mother her trespasses against her for that
day, and her little soul was filled with the peace of the newly
shriven. She flourished a little wooden spade that Aunt Victoria had
given her, but did not dig. The surface of the sand was all unbroken;
no disfiguring foot of man had trodden the long expanse, and Beth
hesitated to be the first to spoil its exquisite serenity. Her heart
expanded, however, and she shouted aloud in a great, uncontrollable
burst of exultation.

A man with a brown beard and moustache, short, crisp, curly hair, and
deep-set, glittering dark grey eyes, came up to her from behind. He
wore a blue pilot-coat, blue trousers, and a peaked cap, the dress of
a merchant-skipper.

"Don't desecrate this heavenly solitude with discordant cries," he
exclaimed.

Beth had not heard him approach, and she turned round, startled, when
he spoke.

"I thought I was singing!" she rejoined.

"Don't dig and disfigure the beautiful bare brown bos