ried and tried and studied I should have thought it very
cruel."

"I guess he didn't try or study. What did Miss Arabella do to you when
you were careless and forgot things? Or were you never bad?"

Doris hung her head, while a faint color mounted to her brow.

"When I was naughty I couldn't go out on the pony nor take him a lump of
sugar. And he loved sugar so. And sometimes I had to study a psalm."

"And weren't children ever whipped in your country?"

"The common people beat their children and their wives and their horses
and dogs. But Miss Arabella was a lady. She couldn't have beaten a cat."

There was a switch on the top of the closet in the kitchen that beat Tom
out of doors when he ventured in. Doris' tender heart rather resented
this.

Foster Leverett smiled at this distinction.

"I do suppose people might get along, but boys are often very trying."

"Don't grown-up people ever do anything wrong? And when they scold
dreadfully aren't they out of temper? Miss Arabella thought it very
unladylike to get out of temper. And what is done to grown people?"

Uncle Leverett laughed and squeezed the soft little hands on his knee.
Yes, men and women flew into a rage every day. Their strict training had
not given them control of their tempers. It had not made them all
honest and truthful. Yet it might have been the best training for the
times, for the heroic duties laid upon them.

"She was very cross once, and her forehead all wrinkled up, and her eyes
were so--so hard; and when she is pleasant she has beautiful brown eyes.
I like beautiful people."

"We can't all be beautiful or good-tempered."

"But Miss Arabella said we could, and that beauty meant sweetness and
grace and truth and kindliness, and that"--she lowered her voice
mysteriously--"where one really tried to be good God gave them grace to
help. I don't quite know about the grace, I'm so little. But I want to
be good."

Was there a beautiful side to goodness? Foster Leverett had been for
some time weakening in the old faith.

"Now I'm ready," exclaimed Betty briskly. "We can say tables without any
book."

Uncle Leverett laughed and squeezed the soft little stranger at his
hearth. But affection was not demonstrative in those days, and it looked
rather weak in a man.

They had grand fun saying addition and multiplication tables. They went
up to the fives, and Doris found that here was a wonderful bridge.

"You could add clear up to a hundred