It was a large room, square and sunny. Its burlaped walls were covered with copies of famous pictures and casts from glorious sculptures. Tables, and four desks, chairs, globes, instruments which Beth did not understand, all these the little girl saw in her first amazed look around the room. A bookcase full of books of all sizes, that looked as if they might also be of all sorts, filled one end of this magic schoolroom’s great width. “No wonder you speak French,” murmured Beth. “Don’t you?” asked Alys. “Not a single word,” said Beth slowly and impressively. “Do you use all these things?” she added. “We draw from the casts, and we use the instruments in our chemistry and astronomy, and that is our own school library,” said Alys, “and our piano. You see we have special teachers for various branches, and lessons in certain things on certain days.” “And we learn riding and swimming and gymnastics out of school, and that’s the best of it,” said Dirk. “To-day we’ve got to have history and literature, and writing compositions--that’s all one woman----” “He means the teacher,” interrupted Alys. “But Miss Deland is a lady, not a woman.” “And it’s the worst of the lot,” Dirk concluded. The “lady who was not a woman” arriving at that moment cut off further explanations. Beth saw a girl with a clear, strong face and the busy air of kindly preoccupation that meant that Miss Deland was a student who loved her work. “This is the little cousin whom you expected?” she said at once. “How do you do, my dear?” “Very well, thank you,” said Beth faintly, overcome by the depths of ignorance which Miss Deland was about to discover in her. Miss Deland lost no time. “Ready, Natalie, Alys, Dirk,” she said. “And----” “Beth Bristead,” Natalie said. “Beth may sit here, mayn’t she, Miss Deland?” She moved a chair near the window as she spoke, and pushed one of the small tables in front of it. Then the work began. To Beth’s relief there was no hint of any tongue but her own. She listened for a while, and, listening, plucked up heart. Natalie was reciting in English history. Beth could not have repeated Natalie’s lesson, but it sounded half familiar to her. She did not know it, but she was a fortunate child in having been given the freedom of a library of English classics in Aunt Rebecca’s house, which lacked so much of other, less important things.