something about you, there came such a singing! What was it? It seems
to have gone--and yet it's here, you know, it's all here," she
insisted, with one hand on the top of her head, and the other on her
chest, and her eyes straining; "and yet I can't get it."

"Beth, don't get on like that," Sammy remonstrated. "You make me feel
all horrid."

"Make you feel," Beth cried in a deep voice, clenching her fists and
shaking them at him, exasperated because the verses continued to elude
her. "Don't you know what I'm here for? I'm here to make you feel. If
you don't feel what I feel, then you _shall_ feel horrid, if I have to
kill you."

"Shut up!" said Sammy, beginning to be frightened. "I shall go away if
you don't."

"Go away, then," said Beth. "You're just an idiot boy, and I'm tired
of you."

Sammy's blue eyes filled with tears. He got down from the heap of
sticks, intent on making his escape; but Beth changed her mind when
she felt her audience melting away.

"Where are you going?" she demanded.

"I'm going home," he said deprecatingly. "I can't stay if you go on in
that fool-fashion."

"It isn't a fool-fashion," Beth rejoined vehemently. "It's you that's
a fool. I told you so before."

"If you wasn't a girl, I'd punch your 'ead," said Sammy, half afraid.

"I believe you!" Beth jeered. "But you're not a girl, anyway." She
flew at him as she spoke, caught him by the collar, kicked his shins,
slapped his face, and drubbed him on the back.

Sammy, overwhelmed by the sudden onslaught, made no effort to defend
himself, but just wriggled out of her grasp, and ran home, with great
tears streaming down his round red cheeks, and sobs convulsing him.

Beth's exasperation subsided the moment she was left alone in the
wood-house. She sat down on the sticks, and looked straight before
her, filled with remorse.

"What shall I do? What shall I do?" she kept saying to herself. "Oh
dear! oh dear! Sammy! Sammy! He's gone. I've lost him. _This is the
most dreadful grief I have ever had in my life._"

The moment she had articulated this full-blown phrase, she became
aware of its importance. She repeated it to herself, reflected upon
it, and was so impressed by it, that she got up, and went indoors to
write it down. By the time she had found pencil and paper, she was the
sad central figure of a great romance, full of the most melancholy
incidents; in which troubled atmosphere she sat and suffered for the
rest of the evenin