uties should have occupied hung heavy on her hands, and she felt
dissatisfied with herself rather than relieved when she neglected
them. So by degrees her habits were formed, and in after life she
found them a very present help in time of trouble, anchors which kept
her from drifting to leeward, as she must have done but for their hold
upon her. Some of her erratic tricks were not to be cured, but they
came to be part of the day's work rather than a hindrance to it. She
saw many a sunrise, for instance, and revelled with uplifted spirit in
the beauty and wonder of the hour; but the soul that sang responsive
to the glories of the summer dawn, the colour, the freshness, the
perfume, was steeped at noon with equal energy in the book she was
studying, so that, instead of losing anything, she gained that day one
sunrise more.

When she left school Beth was fastidiously refined. She hurried over
all the hateful words and passages in the Bible, Shakespeare, or any
other book she might be reading. The words she would not even
pronounce to herself, so strongly did her delicate mind revolt from a
vile idea, and sicken at the expression of it. But, nevertheless, she
pored patiently over every book she could get that had a great
reputation, and in this way she read many not usually given to girls,
and became familiarised with certain facts of life not generally
supposed to be of soul-making material. But she took no harm. The soul
that is shaping itself to noble purpose, the growing soul, tries more
than is proper for its nourishment in its search for sustenance, but
rejects all that is unnecessary or injurious, as water creatures
without intelligence reject any unsuitable substance they collect with
their food.

Before she had been many days at home, Beth found that her mother had
made a new acquaintance, who came to the house often in a casual way
like an intimate friend. He came in on the day of her arrival after
dinner, and was introduced to Beth by her mother as "the doctor." Beth
broke into smiles, for she recognised her long-ago acquaintance of the
rocks, the doctor of her Hector-romance. And it seemed he really was a
doctor; now that was a singular coincidence! In their little
drawing-room she discovered him to be a bigger man than she had
supposed, but otherwise he was like her first impression of him,
striking because of his colouring; the red and white of his
complexion, which was unusually clear for a man, and the lig