d the games going on in the next
garden with pathetic gravity. The girls were playing rounders among
the old fruit-trees on the grass-plot, with a loud accompaniment of
shrieks and shouts of laughter. They tumbled up against the trees
continually, and shook showers of autumn leaves down upon themselves;
and then, tiring of the game, they began to pelt each other with the
leaves, and laughed and shrieked still louder. Some of them looked up
and made faces at Beth, but she did not acknowledge the discourtesy.
She knew that they were not ladies, but did not feel, as her mother
did, that this was a fault for which they should be punished, but a
misfortune, rather, for which she pitied them, and she would have
liked to have made it up to them by knowing them. Suddenly she
remembered that Aunt Victoria was coming back that day, which was
something to look forward to. She took Harriet's duster, and went to
see if the old lady's room was all in order for her, and arranged as
she liked it. Then she returned to the drawing-room, and sat down on
the piano-stool, and rage and rebellion uprose in her heart. The piece
of music still lay on the floor, and she stamped her foot on it. As
she did so, her mother came into the room.

"Do you know your lesson?" she demanded.

"No, I do not," said Beth, and then she doubled her fist, and brought
it down bang on the keyboard.

"How dare you!" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed, startled by the vehemence of
the blow, and jarred by the discordant cry of the poor piano.

"I felt I _must_--I felt I must make something suffer," said Beth, in
a deep chest-voice and with knitted brows, twisting her fingers and
rising to face her mother as she spoke; "and if I had not struck the
piano, I should have struck _you_."

Mrs. Caldwell could not have been more taken aback if Beth had struck
her. The colour left her face, a chill succeeded the heat of temper,
and her right mind returned as to a drunken man suddenly sobered. She
noticed that Beth's eyes were almost on a level with her own, and once
again she realised that if Beth chose to rebel, she would be powerless
to control her. For some seconds they looked at each other without a
word. Then Beth stooped, picked up the piece of music, smoothed it
out, and put it on the stand; and then she shut up the piano
deliberately, but remained standing in front of it with her back to
her mother. Mrs. Caldwell watched her for a little in silence.

"It's your own fault,