Bethany read well, and excelled in Scotch dialect. When she laid down the book after the story of "A Doctor of the Old School," she saw a big tear splash down on Miss Harriet's knitting-work, and Miss Caroline was furtively wiping her spectacles.
"Leave the door open," called Jack, when he had been tucked away for the night. "Then I can listen if it's nice, or go to sleep if it's dull."
"Do you really care to hear this?" asked Bethany, picking up the pamphlet.
"Yes," said Miss Caroline, with several emphatic nods. "I'll own I am very ignorant on the subject; and after something so highly entertaining as these sweet Scotch tales, it's no more than right that we should take something improving."
"O sister," called Jack's voice from the next room, "you never told them about Mr. Lessing, did you?"
"No," answered Bethany. "I never told them any of my Chattanooga experiences. Maybe it would be better to begin with them, and then you can understand how I happened to become so interested in the Hebrew people. The pamphlet can wait until another time."
She tossed it back on the table, and settled herself comfortably in a big chair.
"I'll begin at the beginning," she said, "and tell you how I was persuaded into going, and how strangely events linked into each other."
"Can't you just see it all?" murmured Miss Caroline, as Bethany drew a graphic picture of the mountain outlook, the sunrise, and the crowded tent. When she came to Lessing's story, Miss Harriet dropped her work in her lap, and Miss Caroline leaned forward in her chair.
"Dear! dear! It sounds like a chapter out of a romance!" exclaimed Miss Caroline, when Bethany had finished. "That part about the mother's curse and being buried in effigy makes me think of the novels that we used to smuggle into our rooms at school. I wish you could go on and give us the next chapter. It is intensely interesting."