arrel?"

"My dear child! what could put such a notion into your head?"

"What did you do then?" said Beth. "You couldn't have been all the
time learning to sit upright on a high-backed chair; and I am trying
so hard to think what your home was like. I wish you would tell me."

"It was not at all like yours," Aunt Victoria replied with emphasis.
"We were most carefully brought up children. Our mother was an
admirable person. She lived by rule. If one of her children was born
at night, it was kept in the house until the morning, and then sent
out to nurse until it was two years old. If it was born by day, it was
sent away at once."

"And didn't great-grandmamma ever go to see it?"

"Yes, of course; twice a year."

"I think," said Beth, reflecting, "I should like to keep my babies at
home. I should want to put their little soft faces against mine, and
kiss them, you know."

"Your great-grandmamma did her duty," said Aunt Victoria with grim
approval. "She never let any of us loll as you are doing now, Beth.
She made us all sit up, as _I_ always do, and as I am always telling
you to do; and the consequence was our backs grew strong and never
ached."

"And were you happy?" Beth said solemnly.

Aunt Victoria gazed at her vaguely. She had never asked herself the
question. Then Beth sat with her work on her lap for a little, looking
up at the summer sky. It was an exquisite deep blue just then, with
filmy white clouds drawn up over it like gauze to veil its brightness.
The red roofs and gables and chimneys of the old house below, the
shrubs, the dark Scotch fir, the copper-beech, the limes and the
chestnut stood out clearly silhouetted against it; and Beth felt the
forms and tints and tones of them all, although she was thinking of
something else.

"Mamma's back is always aching," she observed at last, returning to
her work.

"Yes, that is because she was not so well brought up as we were," Aunt
Victoria rejoined.

"_She_ says it is because she had such a lot of children," said Beth.
"Did you ever have any children, Aunt Victoria?"

Miss Victoria Bench let her knitting fall on her
lap--"My--dear--child!" she gasped, holding up both her hands in
horror.

"Oh, I forgot," said Beth. "Only married ladies have children.
Servants have them, though, sometimes before they are married, Harriet
says, and then they call them bad girls. Grandmamma wasn't as wise as
great-grandmamma, I suppose, but perhaps great-grandmamm