is wife again?" Beth asked.

"Oh, as to that, 'ow could it make any difference?" Harriet answered.

Beth was fascinated by the folk-lore of the place, and soon surpassed
Harriet herself in the interpretation of dreams and the reading of
signs and tokens. She began to invent methods of divination for
herself too, such as, "If the boards don't creak when I walk across
the room I shall get through my lessons without trouble this morning,"
a trick which soon became a confirmed habit into which she was apt to
lapse at any time; and so persistent are these early impressions that
to the end of her days she would always rather have seen two rooks
together than one alone, rooks being the birds of omen in a land where
magpies were scarce. Mrs. Caldwell knew nothing of Beth's proficiency
in the black arts. She would never have discussed such a subject
before the children, and took it for granted that Harriet was equally
discreet; while Beth on her part, with her curious quick sense of what
was right and proper, believed her mother to be above such things.

Harriet was a person of varied interests, all of which she discussed
with Beth impartially. She had many lovers, according to her own
account, and was stern and unyielding with them all, and so particular
that she would dismiss them at any moment for nothing almost. If she
went out at night she had always much to tell the next morning, and
Beth would hurry over her lessons, watch her mother out of the way,
and slip into the kitchen or upstairs after Harriet, and question her
about what she had said, and he had said, and if she had let him kiss
her even once.

"Well, last night," Harriet said on one occasion, in a tone of apology
for her own weakness and good-nature. "Last night I couldn't 'elp it.
'E just put 'is arm round me, and, well, there! I was sorry for 'im."

"Why don't you say _he_ and _him_ and _his_, Harriet?"

"I do."

"No, you don't. You say 'e and 'im and 'is."

"Well, that's what you say."

Beth shouted the aspirates at her for answer, but in vain; with all
the will in the world to "talk fine," as she called it, Harriet could
never acquire the art, for want of an ear to hear. She could not
perceive the slightest difference between him and 'im.

Even at this age Beth had her own point of view in social matters, and
frequently disconcerted Harriet by a word or look or inflection of the
voice which expressed disapproval of her conduct. Harriet had been at