* * * * *

The following term, Beth watched the spring come in at school with
infinite yearning. To be out--to be free to sit under the apple-trees
and look up through the boughs at the faintly flushed blossom, till
the vision and the dream came upon her, and she passed from conscious
thought into a higher phase of being--just to do that was her one
desire till the petals fell. Then pleasure-boats began to be rowed on
the river, rowed or steered by girls no older than herself, in summer
dresses delicately fresh; and she, seeing them, became aware of the
staleness of her own shabby clothing, and writhed under the rules
which would not allow her even to walk on the path overlooking the
river, and gaze her fill at it. The creamy white flowers of the great
magnolia on the lawn came out, and once she slipped across the grass
to peer into them and smell them. She got a bad mark for that, the
second she had had.

At preparation that evening she sat so that she could see the river,
and watched it idly instead of working; and presently there floated
into her mind the rhyme she made when she was a little child at
Fairholm--

"The fairy folk are calling me."

Suddenly she caught her breath, her cheeks flushed, her eyes
sparkled, her whole aspect changed from apathy to animation, and she
laughed.

"What has happened to please you, Beth; you look quite bright?" Miss
Bey said, meeting her in the vestibule when preparation was over. Miss
Bey was said to favour Beth by some; Beth was said to toady Bey by
others; the truth being that they had taken to each other from the
first, and continued friends.

"I've got a sort of singing at my heart," Beth answered, sparkling.
"The fairy folk are calling me."

Beth slept in No. 5 then, and had the bed nearest to the window. There
was a moon that night, and she lay long watching the light of it upon
the blind--long after the gas was put out and the teachers had gone to
their rooms. Wondering at last if the girls in the room were asleep,
she sat up in bed, the better to be able to hear; and judged that they
were. Then she got out of bed, walked quietly down the room in her
night-dress and bare feet, opened the door cautiously, and found
herself out in the carpetless passage. It was dark there, but she
walked on confidently to the head of the grand staircase, which the
girls were only allowed to use on special occasions. "This _is_ a
special occasion,"