certainly with no
pretension to modern taste or art, but opened with French windows into a
glorious, big, old-world garden.

The house was known by the name of the Gray House, and the old garden as
the Gray Garden, but the garden at least bore no resemblance to its
neutral-tinted name. It had green alleys, and sheltering trees, and a
great expanse of smoothly kept lawn. It possessed flower-beds and flower
borders innumerable. There was more than one bower composed entirely of
rose-trees, and there were very long hedges of sweet briar and Scotch
roses.

The tennis-courts were kept to perfection in the Gray Garden, and all
the lasses and boys of Northbury were rejoiced when an invitation came
to them to test their skill at a tournament here. There was no girl in
Northbury more popular than Beatrice. This popularity was unsought. It
came to her because she was gracious and affectionate, of a generous
nature, above petty slanders, petty gossips, petty desires. Life had
always been rich and plentiful for her, she possessed abundant health,
excellent spirits, and a sunny temper not easily ruffled; she was
sympathetic, too, and although, in mind and nature she was many steps
above the girls with whom she associated, she was really unconscious of
this difference and gave herself no superior airs. A companion who would
have been her equal, whose intellect would have sharpened hers, whose
spirit would have matched her own, whose refinement would have delighted
and whose affection would have been something to revel in, she had never
hitherto known.

Unconscious of her loss she had not deplored it. It was not until she
and Catherine Bertram had flashed a look of delight and sympathy at one
another that she first felt stirring within her breast the wings of a
new desire. For the first time she felt unsatisfied and incomplete. She
scarcely knew that she thirsted for Catherine, but this was so.
Catherine awakened all sorts of new emotions in her heart. She had spent
a delightful day with the Bertrams, and hurried home now in the highest
spirits.

In the High Street she met three girls, whose names were Matty, Alice,
and Sophy Bell. Their father was a retired coal merchant. There was
scarcely any active trade down in Northbury, almost all the inhabitants
having retired to live there on their fortunes. The Bells were small,
rather thickly-made girls, with round faces and round eyes. They always
dressed alike, and one was never see