With a sigh that it was all over, Beth turned to follow her cousins out of the pew. Alys was immediately before her, and as she started to step into the aisle, she tripped and almost fell. She turned furiously upon Dirk, who was that moment pressing past Beth in his haste to get out. Alys’s face was crimson, her eyes blazed with anger, she raised her hand, but, remembering where she was, dropped it again and continued her way out of the church in a towering rage. “We are going to walk home, lassies,” announced Mr. Cortlandt over his shoulder to his daughters and his niece. Beth was glad of this. The sun had brightened while they were in church, and the avenue was filled with two streams of story-book people, beautifully dressed, gay, prosperous-looking, handsome. It was a joy to Beth to be one of the children who were part of the crowd, moving visions, surpassing the loveliest in Miss Tappan’s books in the far-off, humdrum days. When they had reached home and Beth came running down-stairs after she had laid off coat and hat, she found her aunt looking troubled and her uncle talking sternly to Dirk in the library. “You shall certainly be punished, sir,” he said. “If it is amusing to you to trip up your sister you must be taught not to amuse yourself. Fancy Alys almost falling in church because a great boy of ten tripped her!” Dirk looked sullen; his face was dark red; he frowned fearfully. Beth knew in an instant that Alys had thought that Dirk had been responsible for her accident in leaving the pew, and had complained to her father that her brother might be punished. In the little time that she had been in this household Beth had discovered that her uncle took a hopeless view of Dirk, and was ready to believe him guilty whenever he was accused, on the general ground of past experience. “Oh, Uncle Jim!” she cried, “Dirk isn’t to blame for Alys’s tripping! I know exactly what he was doing, and he didn’t have a thing to do with that, truly.” “Then what did I trip on?” demanded Alys, who had been enjoying Dirk’s discomfiture. “I don’t know, Alys, but Dirk didn’t do one single thing to you. He was--he was right behind me, and I know,” cried Beth. She did not say that Dirk was pinching her again, but this was the case. “Why didn’t you say so, Dirk?” demanded his father. “What’s the use?” sulked Dirk. “I shouldn’t think you’d take his part, Beth; he hasn’t been very nice to you since you came,” said Alys. “Well, I suppose he doesn’t like me; everybody can’t like everybody--every other body, I mean,” said Beth. “I don’t think that has anything to do with what’s fair. And I do know Dirk didn’t trip you.” “That’s the right spirit, Lady Beth!” cried Mr. Cortlandt heartily, as Mrs. Cortlandt said: “Oh, I’m glad, little son, you weren’t unkind to your sister!” “I beg your pardon, Dirk, for pitching into you without hearing your side first,” said Mr. Cortlandt, speaking as one man speaks to another. “Shake hands, Dirk.”