“I guess it would be more like you to be Miles Standish that took care of the poor Pilgrims, because you are the only boy of this family,” said Beth hastily, with her sweetest smile. Quarrels made her quite sick and she threw herself into the breach to prevent this one. Dirk stared at her. It was true that he tormented his sisters and was rather a trial, but they had never tried coaxing him into better ways. They considered him a nuisance and let him feel it; it was a new experience to Dirk to find a girl implying that a noble part would become him. “Yes, I guess I would! A lot I’d take care of ’em,” he muttered, but his wrathy look subsided, and he glanced at Beth with an expression that made her resolve to be friends with Dirk, awful as she had been thinking him. “Well,” Natalie resumed after this cloud had blown over, “you have only till next Thursday to learn to dance, Beth. So come up-stairs and begin this minute. You’ve simply got to two-step and waltz by then or you won’t have any fun. You come up-stairs and Alys and I will take turns playing and teaching you, and to-morrow you are going to dancing class with us.” Beth meekly obeyed. For the next two hours her cousins relentlessly put her through vigorous dancing lessons in the schoolroom. At first she could not move her feet, but having an ear for rhythm she did better after a while, and by the time her teachers gave up for the day Beth could dance a two-step, after a fashion. Dirk came in and rewarded Beth for her kindness after lunch by offering to be her partner. Natalie and Alys were so surprised that they could hardly believe their ears; Dirk had never been known to do such a thing before in his ten years of life. The next day was Saturday and in the morning the four children were to go to dancing class. “Why, Frieda, isn’t it a school?” cried Beth coming in from her bath to see a froth of dainty things laid out on her bed, ready for her to put on. “It is, and it isn’t; you’ll see,” said Frieda. “Mrs. Cortlandt picked out what you should wear.” So Beth, still wondering, submitted to being dressed; everything that Frieda put on was so beautiful that she soon began to be glad of any excuse for wearing it. All in white Beth found that she was to be clad, white stockings, white slippers, foamy white skirts, one above another, and finally a white gown over them all, fine and simple, with only hem and tucks to ornament it, but showing through its delicacy the deep lace of her skirts. The only color about Beth was in her cheeks, her dilated blue eyes, her flying golden hair, for this Frieda had crowned with an immense white bow, the climax and queen of all preceding bows. “Well, I look exactly, just exactly like the loveliest dressed girl in Miss Tappan’s fashion books,” said Beth, surveying herself in a sort of delirium. “I wish, I do wish that Janie Little could see me! But what on earth do girls wear here at parties, Frieda?”