drawing and painting, and playing,
and everything?" Beth asked. "Mamma knows tunes she composed."

"Your dear grandmamma was an exceedingly clever girl," Aunt Victoria
answered stiffly, as if Beth had taken a liberty when she asked the
question; "and she was the youngest, and desired to learn all we knew,
so we each did our best to impart our special knowledge to her. _I_
taught her French."

"How strange," said Beth; "and out of this very book? And she is dead.
And now you are teaching _me_."

The feeling in the child's voice, and the humble emphasis on the
pronoun _me_, touched the old lady; something familiar too in the tone
caused her to look up quickly and kindly over her spectacles, and it
seemed to her for a moment as if the little, long-lost sister sat
opposite to her--great grey eyes, delicate skin, bright brown hair,
expression of vivid interest, and all.

"Strange! strange!" she muttered to herself several times.

"I am supposed to be like grandmamma, am I not?" said Beth, as if she
read her thoughts.

"You _are_ like her," Aunt Victoria rejoined.

"But you can be a plain likeness of a good-looking person, I suppose?"
Beth said tentatively.

"Certainly you can," Miss Victoria answered with decision; and the
spark of pleasure in her own personal appearance, which had recently
been kindled in Beth, instantly flickered and went out.

Their little sitting-room had a bow-window down to the ground, the
front part of which formed two doors with glass in the upper part and
wood below, leading out into the garden. On fine days they always
stood wide open, and the warm summer air scented with roses streamed
in. Both Beth and Aunt Victoria loved to look out into the garden.
From where Beth sat to do her French at the end of the table, she
could see the soft green turf, a bright flower-border, and an old
brick wall, mellowed in tone by age, behind it; and a little to the
left, a high, thick screen of tall shrubs of many varieties, set so
close that all the different shades of green melted into each other.
The irregular roof of a large house, standing on lower ground than the
garden, with quaint gables and old chimneys, rose above the belt of
shrubs; the tiles on it lay in layers that made Beth think of a wasp's
nest, only that they were dark-red instead of grey; but she loved the
colour as it appeared all amongst the green trees and up against the
blue sky. She often wondered what was going on under that roof,