Sammy sidled off, not daring to turn his back full till he was at a safe distance, lest he should be seized from behind and shaken. He was not a heroic figure in retreat, but Beth, in her indignation, noted nothing but the insult that had been offered him. For several days, when her mother was out, she watched and waited for him, anxious to atone; but Sammy kept to the other side of the road, and only cast furtive smiles at her as he ran by. It never occurred to Beth that he was less valiant than she was, or less willing to brave danger for her sake than she was for his. She thought he was keeping away for fear of getting her into trouble; and she beckoned to him again and again in order to explain that she did not care; but he only fled the faster. Then Beth wrote him a note. It was the first she had ever written voluntarily, and she shut herself up in the acting-room to compose it, in imitation of Aunt Grace Mary, whose beautiful delicate handwriting she always did her best to copy--with very indifferent success, however, for the connection between her hand and her head was imperfect. She could compose verses and phrases long before she could commit them to paper intelligibly; and it was not the composition of her note to Sammy that troubled her, but her bad writing. She made a religious ceremony of the effort, praying fervently, "Lord, let me write it well." Every day she presented a miscellaneous collection of petitions to the Lord, offering them up as the necessity arose, being in constant communication with Him. When she wanted to go out, she asked for fine weather; when she did not want to go out, she prayed that it might rain. She begged that she might not be found out when she went poaching on Uncle James's fields; that she might be allowed to catch something; that new clothes might be sent her from somewhere, she felt so ashamed in her dirty old shabby ones. She asked for boots and shoes and gloves, and for help with her lessons; and, when she had no special petition to offer, she would ejaculate at intervals, "Lord, send me good luck!" But, however great the variety of her daily wants, one prayer went up with the others always, "Lord, let me write well!" meaning, let me write a good hand; yet her writing did not improve, and she was much disheartened about it. She took the Lord into her confidence on the subject very frankly. When she had been naughty, and was not found out and punished, she thanked Him for His goodness; but why would He not let her write well? She asked Him the question again and again, lifting her grey eyes to the grey sky pathetically; and all the time, though she never suspected it, she was learning to write more than well, but in a very different sense of the word. Her note to Sammy was as follows:--