dwell took a kindly interest in each other's affairs. Mrs.
Davy happened to be changing the curtains in front that afternoon when
Beth crept out of the attic window on to the roof, and she was
paralysed with horror for a moment, expecting to see the child roll
off into the street. She was a sensible woman, however, and quickly
recovering herself, she ran across the road, with her spectacles on,
and rapped at Mrs. Caldwell's door. Beth, hacking away at the lead
with the carving-knife, did not heed the rap. Presently, however, she
heard hurried footsteps on the stairs, and climbed back into the attic
incontinently, putting her spoils in her pocket. When Mrs. Davy, her
mother, and Harriet, all agitated, burst open the door, she was
standing at the window looking out tranquilly.

"What were you doing on the roof, Beth?" her mother demanded.

"Nothing," Beth answered.

"Mrs. Davy says she saw you get out of the window."

Beth was silent.

"You're a bad girl, giving your mother so much trouble," Mrs. Davy
exclaimed, looking at her under her spectacles sternly. "If you was my
child I'd whack you, I would."

Beth was instantly a lady, sneering at this common woman who was
taking a liberty which she knew her mother would resent as much as she
did.

"And what were you doing with the carving-knife, Miss Beth?" cried
Harriet, spying it on the floor, and picking it up. Criminals are only
clever up to a certain point; Beth had forgotten to conceal the
carving-knife. "Oh dear! oh dear! If you 'aven't 'acked it all the way
along!"

"Oh dear! oh dear!" Mrs. Caldwell echoed. It was her best
carving-knife, and Beth would certainly have been beaten if Mrs. Davy
had not suggested it. As it was, however, Mrs. Caldwell controlled her
temper, and merely ordered her to go downstairs immediately. In the
management of her children she would not be dictated to by anybody.

This was Beth's first public appearance as a disturber of the peace,
and the beginning of the bad name she earned for herself in certain
circles eventually. But she was let off lightly for it. Mrs.
Caldwell's punishments were never retrospective. She was thunder and
lightning in her wrath; a flash and then a bang, and it was all over.
If she missed the first movement, the culprit escaped. She could no
more have punished one of her children in cold blood than she could
have cut its throat.

Beth ran down to the acting-room, so called because the boys had
brought hom