, but it was much worse to have Harriet peeping in
to gloat over her humiliation. Harriet was not to be snubbed, however.
She went up to the piano and looked at the music.

"It's precious hard, I should think," she remarked.

"It's _not_ hard," Beth answered positively, "if anybody tells you
what you don't know and can't make out for yourself. I always remember
when I'm told or shown how to do it; but what's the use of staring at
a sign you've never seen before? Just you look at that! Can you make
anything out of it?" Harriet approached, and, after staring at the
sign curiously for some time, shook her head. "Of course not," said
Beth, snatching up her music, and throwing it on the floor; "and
neither can anybody else. It isn't fair."

Bernadine had begun her lessons by this time in the next room, and
Mrs. Caldwell suddenly began to scold again. "Oh, that awful voice!"
Beth groaned aloud, her racked nerves betraying her.

"She's catchin' it now!" said Harriet, after listening with interest.
She seemed to derive some sort of gratification from the children's
troubles. "But don't you bother any more, Miss Beth.--Your ma'll 'ave
forgotten all about it by goin'-out time--or she'll pertend she 'as to
save 'erself trouble. Come and 'elp us wi' the beds."

Beth rose slowly from the piano-stool, and followed Harriet upstairs
to the bedroom at the back of the house. She was at once attracted to
the open window by an uproar of voices--"the voices of children in
happy play." There was a girls' day-school next door kept by the
Misses Granger. Miss Granger had called on Mrs. Caldwell as soon as
she was settled in her house, to beg for the honour of being allowed
to educate her three little girls, and Beth had assisted at the
interview with serious attention. It would have been the best thing in
the world for her had she been allowed to romp and learn with that
careless, happy, healthy-minded crew of respectable little plebeians;
but Mrs. Caldwell would never have dreamt of sending any of her own
superior brood to associate with such people, even if she could have
afforded it. She politely explained to Miss Granger that she was
educating her children herself for the present; and it was then, with
a sickening sense of disappointment, that Beth rejected her mother's
social standard, with its "vulgar exclusiveness," once for all.

She hung out of the window now, heedless of Harriet's appeals to be
"'elped wi' the beds," and watche