"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 without any trouble," the child declared gleefully. "But you couldn't multiply."
"Why, yes," said Betty. "I had not exactly thought of it before. Five times thirteen would be sixty-five, and so on. Five times twenty would be a hundred. Why, we do it in a great many things, but I suppose they—whoever invented tables thought that was far enough to go."
"Who did invent them?"