"Mamma," said Beth, taking advantage of her mood, "it's a poor heart that never rejoices. Let's have a holiday, you and I, to celebrate the summer." "But the summer hasn't come," Mrs. Caldwell objected, smiling. "But summer is coming, is coming," Beth chanted, "and I want to make a song about it." "_You_ make a song!" Bernadine exclaimed. "Why, you can't spell summer." Beth made a face at her. "I know you want a holiday, mamma," she resumed. "Come, confess! I work you to death. And there's church to-day at eleven, and I want to go." "Well, if you want to go to church," said Mrs. Caldwell, relieved. Beth did not wait to hear the end of the sentence. She went to the drawing-room first, and sat down at the little rosewood piano with a volume of Moore's "Lalla Rookh" open before her. "From the mountain's warbling fount I come," she chanted, with her eyes fixed on the words, but she played as if she were reading notes. She wove all the poems she loved to music in this way, and played and sang them softly to herself by the hour together. The Lenten service in the church at the end of the road was but poorly attended. There were not more than a dozen people present; but Beth, seated beside the door, enjoyed it. She was all fervour now, and every emotional exercise was a pleasure. After the service she strolled down the quaintly irregular front street, which was all red brick houses with small window-panes, three to the width of the window, except where an aspiring tradesman had introduced plate-glass and a vulgar disguise of stucco, which converted the warm-toned bricks into commonplace colourless greyness. It was on one side of this street that the principal shops were, and Beth stood for some time gazing at a print in a stationer's window--a lovely little composition of waves lapping in gently towards a sheltered nook on a sandy beach. Beth, wafted there instantly, heard the dreamy murmur and felt the delicious freshness of the sea, yet the picture did not satisfy her. "I should want somebody," she broke out in herself. "I should want somebody--somebody to lay my head against. Ah, dear Lord, how I hate to be alone!" Old Lady Benyon, at her post of observation in the big bow-window at the top of the street, saw Beth standing there, and speculated. "Gracious, how that child grows!" she exclaimed. "She'll be a woman directly."