ad been
boasting. To their surprise, however, Beth took the request seriously,
settled herself in her chair, folded her hands, and, with her eyes
roaming about the room as if she were picking up the details from the
walls, the floor, the ceiling, and all it contained, started without
hesitation. It was the romantic story of a haunted house on a great
rocky promontory, and the freshness and sound of the sea pervaded it.
The girls went on with their work for a little, but by degrees first
one and then another stopped, and just sat staring at Beth, while
gravity settled on every face as the interest deepened.

Suddenly the bell rang, and the story was not finished.

"Oh dear!" Miss Smallwood exclaimed, "it is very fascinating, Beth;
but I really am afraid I ought not to have allowed you to tell it. I
had no idea--I must speak to Miss Clifford."

The fame of this wonderful story spread through the school, and the
next half-holiday the first-class girls sent to ask Beth to go to
their room and repeat it; but Beth was not in the mood, and answered
their messenger tragically:--

"'Twas not for this I left my father's home!
Go, tell your class, that Vashti will not come."

"Vashti's a little beast, I think," the head girl observed when the
message was delivered.

Miss Clifford also sent for Beth, and requested her to repeat the
story, that she might judge for herself if she should be allowed to go
on with it; and Beth repeated it, being constrained; but the recital
was so wearisome that Miss Clifford dismissed her before she was
half-way through, with leave to finish it if anybody cared to hear it.
When Thursday came, the girls and Miss Smallwood cared very much to
hear it, and Beth, stimulated by their clamours, went on without a
break for the whole hour, and ended with a description of a shipwreck,
which was so vivid that the whole class was shaken with awe, and sat
silent for a perceptible time after she stopped.

Beth could rarely be persuaded to repeat this performance; but from
that time her standing was unique, both with girls and mistresses, a
fact, however, of which she herself was totally unaware. She felt her
backwardness in school work and nothing else, and petitioned God
incessantly to help her with her lessons, and get her put up; and put
up she was regularly until she reached the third, when she was among
the elder girls. She was never able to do the work properly of any
class she was in, howev