he should say miss to them if they did not say miss to her and to
each other.

Poor Mrs. Caldwell was in great straits for want of money at this
time. She had scarcely enough to pay for their meagre fare, and her
own clothes and the children's were almost beyond patching and
darning. Beth surprised her several times sitting beside the
dining-table with the everlasting mending on her lap, fretting
silently, and the child's heart was wrung. There was some legal
difficulty, and letters which added to her mother's trouble came to
the house continually.

The same faculty made Beth either the naughtiest or the best of
children; the difference depended on her heart: if that were touched,
she was all sympathy; but if no appeal was made to her feelings, her
daily doings were the outcome of so many erratic impulses acted on
without consideration, merely to vary the disastrous monotony of those
long idle afternoons.

The day after she had surprised her mother fretting over her letters,
another packet arrived. Beth happened to be early up that morning, and
opened the door to the postman. She would like to have given the
packet back to him, but that being impossible, she carried it up to
the acting-room and hid it in the roof. When her mother came down,
however, she found to her consternation that the fact of there being
no letter at all that morning was a greater trouble if anything than
the arrival of the one the day before; so she boldly brought it down
and delivered it, quite expecting to be whipped. But for once Mrs.
Caldwell asked for an explanation, and the child's motive was so
evident that even her mother was more affected by her sympathy than
enraged by the inconvenient expression of it.

The next day she was playing on the pier with Bernadine. Her mother and
Aunt Victoria were walking up and down, not paying much attention to the
children. First they swung on a chain that was stretched from post to
post down the middle of the pier to keep people from being washed off in
stormy weather; but Bernadine tumbled over backwards and hurt her head,
and was jeered at besides by some rude little street children, who could
not understand why the little Caldwells, who were as shabby as
themselves, should look down on them, and refuse to associate with them.
It was not Beth's nature to be exclusive. She had no notion of
differences of degree. Any pleasant person was her equal. She was as
much gratified by friendly notice from the