on the horse, looking in at them.
Mamma's face became quite rosy, and she laughed a good deal and showed
her teeth. Beth had not noticed them before.

"What are you staring at, Beth?" Mildred whispered.

"Mamma's all pink," Beth said.

"That's blushing," said Mildred.

"What's blushing?" said Beth.

"Getting pink."

"What does she do it for?"

"She can't help it."

Beth continued to stare, and at last Mrs. Caldwell noticed it, and
asked her what she was looking at.

"You've got nice white teeth," said Beth. Mrs. Caldwell smiled.

"Have you only just discovered that?" papa asked through the window.

"You never told me," Beth protested, thinking herself reproached. "You
said Jane Nettles had."

The smile froze on mamma's lips, and papa's horse became unmanageable.
Beth saw there was something wrong, and stopped, looking from one to
the other intently.

Mrs. Caldwell recovered herself. "What a stolid face she has!" she
remarked presently by way of breaking an awkward pause.

Beth wondered what "stolid" meant, and who "she" was.

"She doesn't look well," papa observed.

"She's jest had the life shook out of her, sir," Kitty put in.

"Kitty, how dare you?" Mrs. Caldwell began.

"It's to the journey I'm alludin' now, m'em," Kitty explained with
dignity. "The child can't bear the travellin'."

"Well, it won't last much longer now," said papa, and then made some
remark to mamma in Italian, which brought back her good-humour. They
always spoke Italian to each other, because papa did not know French
so well as mamma did. Beth supposed at that time that all grown-up
people spoke French or Italian to each other, and she used to wonder
which she would speak when she was grown up.

They stopped at an inn for an hour or two, for there was still another
stage of this interminable journey. Mildred had a bag with a big doll
in it, and some almond-sweets. She left it on a window-seat when they
went to have something to eat, and when she thought of it again it was
nowhere to be found.

"They would steal the teeth out of your head in this God-forsaken
country," Captain Caldwell exclaimed, in a tone of exasperation.

An awful vision of igneous rocks, with mis-shapen creatures prowling
about amongst them, instantly appeared to Beth in illustration of a
God-forsaken country, but she tried vainly to imagine how stealing
teeth out of your head was to be managed.

When they set off again, and had left the grey town