use of her
uncanny words and ways, and she knew it, and the thought of it was a
grief to her. She wanted the people to like her as she would have
liked them had they let her. The wish to win them fired her
imagination. She looked on ahead into futurity, and was a beautiful
lady, driving a pair of ponies down a wooded lane, with a carriage
full of good things for the cottagers, and they all loved her, and
were very glad to see her.

"What are you thinking about?" Dan asked.

"How nice it would be to be rich," she replied.

"But you will be well off when you're twenty-one, I am told."

"I suppose there's a chance of it," she answered dreamily.

(The ponies had arrived at the village by this time, and she was
looking up at an old grey church with a red roof.)

"Do you know what your aunt's income was?" he asked.

"Seven or eight hundred a year," she answered absently.

(The sexton's little house stood by the gate leading into the
churchyard. His wife came out when the carriage stopped, wiping
soap-suds from her bare arms with her apron. Beth leaned forward and
held out her hand to her, and the woman smiled a cordial welcome. She
had a round flat face and fair hair. Then Beth handed her a mysterious
package from the carriage, which she received half in delight and half
in inquiry.)

But Beth's imagination stopped there, for she perceived that she had
passed the gate of the garden in which was the chalybeate spring.
There was a cottage in the garden, and Beth turned back, and went up
to the door, where a woman was standing holding a plump child, whose
little fat thigh, indented by the pressure, bulged over her bare arm.

"May we have a drink, please?" Beth asked.

"Yes, and welcome," the woman answered. "I'll fetch you a glass."

"Let me hold the baby," said Beth.

The woman smiled, and handed him to her. Beth took him awkwardly, and
squeezed him up in her arms as a child holds a kitten.

"Isn't he nice?" she said.

"That's a matter of taste," Dan answered. "I don't like 'em
fat-bottomed myself."

Beth froze at the expression. When the woman returned, she handed the
child back to her carefully, but without a smile, took the glass, and
went down to the spring by a narrow winding path which took them out
of sight of the cottage directly. Here it was old trees again, and
green banks, with the Beck below. When they were under the trees Beth
looked up at a big elm, and her companion noticed her lips move.

"