ad so often heard Mr. Carnegie's opinion of these
accomplishments that her mother's regrets wore a comic aspect to her
mind, and between laughing and crying she protested that she did not
care, she should not try to improve to please _them_--meaning her
Woldshire kinsfolk mentioned in the lawyer's letter.

"You have good common-sense, Bessie, and I am sure you will use it,"
said her mother with persuasive gravity. "If you show off with your
tempers, that will give a color to their notion that you have been badly
brought up. You must do us and yourself what credit you can, going
amongst strangers. I am not afraid for you, unless you set up your
little back, and determine to be downright naughty and perverse."

Bessie's countenance was not promising as she gave ear to these
premonitions. Her upper lip was short, and her nether lip pressed
against it with a scorny indignation. Her back was very much up, indeed,
in the moral sense indicated by her mother, and as these inauspicious
moods of hers were apt to last the longer the longer they were reasoned
with, her mother prudently refrained from further disquisition. She bade
her go about her ordinary business as if nothing had happened, and
Bessie did go about these duties with a quiet practical obedience to law
and order which bore out the testimony to her good common-sense. She
thought of Mr. John Short's letter, it is true, and once she stood for a
minute considering the sketch of Abbotsmead which hung above her chest
of drawers. "Gloomy dull old place," was her criticism on it; but even
as she looked, there ensued the reflection that the sun _must_ shine
upon it sometimes, though the artist had drawn it as destitute of light
and shade as the famous portrait of Queen Elizabeth, when she wished to
be painted fair, and was painted merely insipid.

CHAPTER III.

_THE COMMUNITY OF BEECHHURST._

The lawyer's letter from Norminster had thrust aside all minor
interests. Even the school-feast that was to be at the rectory that
afternoon was forgotten, until the boys reminded their mother of it at
dinner-time. "Bessie will take you," said Mrs. Carnegie, and Bessie
acquiesced. The one thing she found impossible to-day was to sit still.
We will go to the school-feast with the children. The opportunity will
be good for introducing to the reader a few persons of chief
consideration in the rural community where Bessie Fairfax acquired some
of her permanent views of life.