ness, did what she bade
him do and went where she bade him go; sometimes to the most expensive
hotels, where, while the money lasted they lived like princes, and when
it was gone, like rats in a hole; sometimes to Monte Carlo, where Daisy
was generally successful; sometimes to Hamburg and Baden Baden,
sometimes to Epsom, where she bet with Lord Hardy on the races, and got
her money, whether she lost or won, for the kind-hearted Ted could never
withstand her tears; and sometimes into the houses to which she managed
to get invited, and where she staid as long as possible, or until some
other house was open to her.

Meanwhile little Bessie grew into a child of wonderful loveliness.
Possessing her mother's beauty of feature and complexion and her
father's refinement of feeling, she added to them a truthful simplicity
and frank ingenuousness of manner which won all hearts to her. Much as
they might despise her mother, everybody loved and pitied Bessie, whose
life was a kind of scramble, and who early learned to think and act for
herself, and to know there was a difference between her father and her
mother. She learned, too, that large hotels, where prices were high,
meant two rolls and a cup of milk for breakfast, a biscuit or apple for
lunch, and nothing for dinner except what her mother could
surreptitiously convey into her pocket at _table d'hote_. And still,
there was no merrier, happier child playing upon the sands at
Aberystwyth than Bessie McPherson on the summer morning when Miss Betsey
McPherson first saw her and called out:

"Betsey McPherson, is that you?"

Leaving her companions she went to the tall, peculiar looking woman
sitting so straight and stiff upon the bench, and laying her soft white
hands on her knee, looked curiously and fearlessly into her face, with
the remark:

"I am _Bessie_, not _Betsey_. I think that is a horrid name."

And so the conversation commenced between the strange pair, and Bessie
told of the stingy aunt in America for whom she was named, and who had
never sent her a thing, and whom her mamma called "Old Sauerkraut."
Bessie was very communicative, and Miss McPherson learned in a few
minutes more of the Bohemian life and habits of her nephew and his wife
than she had learned at her brother's house in London, where she had
been staying for a few weeks, and where Mistress Daisy was not held in
very high esteem. And all the time she talked, Bessie's little hands
were busy with the fol