“My lot is a lot of aprons,” said Beth. “Do you think butterflies can help it, Aunt Rebecca?” Then, without waiting to make clear her not-particularly clear question, Beth hurried on. “Sometimes, Aunt Rebecca, I like to make believe that everything happens wonderfully. I make believe we are rich, as rich as Greasers----” “Crœsus, child,” corrected Aunt Rebecca with a short laugh. “Oh,” said Beth. “And we can have everything on earth we want--only I don’t know just what you would like, Aunt Rebecca, to have a perfectly glorious time. So I always just hurry over that, making believe you can have every single thing you want, so you can decide that yourself, and I can go on making believe for myself, without worrying about you. And, my goodness, what don’t I have! Dresses--oceans of them, and I wear the splendidest ones every day, and don’t mind at all whether they fade, or get spotted, or what happens! And I live in a palace, and hardly walk at all, just order the horses, you know, and go! And I travel, and I eat such lovely things that ice-cream isn’t worth talking about, and I smell flowers all the time, because I have acres of them, even in winter, and---- Oh, mercy! It’s a beautiful make-believe, but there isn’t much danger of its coming true. There aren’t any fairies nowadays; I guess there never were any in New England, and it would take fairies and fairies to bring it true! Do you think it’s a lovely make-believe, Aunt Rebecca?” “No. I think it’s very bad for you to let yourself covet luxury that isn’t possible for you to have, Beth,” said Aunt Rebecca. “You will grow up a discontented, envious woman if you allow your mind to dwell on riches which can never be yours.” “It doesn’t make me feel wicked, Aunt Rebecca,” said Beth slowly. “It is like a great secret garden where I go to play. It’s fairy-land; there aren’t such lovely things anywhere as I make believe I have, so I don’t think it makes me wicked, Aunt Rebecca. It’s just dream things. Of course I know I’ll never see them, so I don’t think of them that way.” Now this is a workaday world, and Beth was quite right in saying that there are not fairies, at least not at work on many mortal lives, but this is what happened just as the little girl ended with a wistful, yet happy sigh. Lydia Tappan, the village dressmaker, came up the street, and in her hand she held a letter. She turned in at Aunt Rebecca’s gate and walked up the flagged walk, and opened the door in the simple fashion of the place, without the ceremony of knocking. She entered the sitting-room before Beth could get up from her footstool, as she hastened to do, like the polite child that she was, respectful to her elders. “I was down to mail a letter, Rebecca,” said Miss Tappan, “and I thought I’d bring up your mail. You’ve got a letter from New York; I wasn’t aware you knew anybody there.”