. Seth was
just coming to tell Betty that the meal was all ground and ready when
she appeared discreetly from behind the willows that grew at the mill
end, and so they drove home without anything exciting to mark the way.

Betty had taken many music lessons, but she was by no means a musician,
and seldom played for the pleasure of it. For some reason, after tea was
over that evening she opened Aunt Barbara's piano and began to play a
gay military march which she had toilsomely learned from one of the
familiar English operas. She played it once or twice, and played it
very well; in fact, an old gentleman who was going slowly along the
street stopped and leaned on the fence to listen. He had been a captain
in the militia in the days of the old New England trainings, and now
though he walked with two canes and was quite decrepit, he liked to be
reminded of his military service, and the march gave him a great
pleasure and made him young again while he stood there beating time on
the front fence, and nodding his head. One may often give pleasure
without knowing it, if one does pleasant things.

Next morning, early after breakfast, Betty appeared at Miss Mary
Leicester's door with an armful of mending. Aunt Mary waked up early and
had her breakfast in bed, and liked very much to be called upon
afterward and to hear something pleasant. One of the windows of her room
looked down into the garden and it was cool and shady there at this time
of the day, so Betty seated herself with a dutiful and sober feeling not
unmixed with enjoyment.

"I have thought ever since yesterday that I was too severe, my dear,"
said Aunt Mary somewhat wistfully from her three pillows. "But you see,
Betty, I am so conscious of the mistakes of my own life that I wish to
help you to avoid them. It is a terrible thing to become dependent upon
other people,--especially if they are busy people," she added
plaintively.

"Oh, I ought to have managed everything better," responded Betty,
looking at the ends of two fingers that had poked directly through a
stocking toe. "I don't mean to let things get so bad again. I never do
when I am with papa, because--I know better. But it has been such fun to
play since I came to Tideshead! I don't feel a bit grown up here."

Aunt Mary looked at little Betty with an affectionate smile.

"I think fifteen is such a funny age," Betty went on; "you seem to just
perch there between being a little girl and a young lady, and