"You should say Miss Bernadine," that young lady admonished her.
A few minutes afterwards Emily corrected Bernadine for not saying miss to Beth and herself. Beth tried to explain, but Emily could not see why she should say miss to them if they did not say miss to her and to each other.
Poor Mrs. Caldwell was in great straits for want of money at this time. She had scarcely enough to pay for their meagre fare, and her own clothes and the children's were almost beyond patching and darning. Beth surprised her several times sitting beside the dining-table with the everlasting mending on her lap, fretting silently, and the child's heart was wrung. There was some legal difficulty, and letters which added to her mother's trouble came to the house continually.
The same faculty made Beth either the naughtiest or the best of children; the difference depended on her heart: if that were touched, she was all sympathy; but if no appeal was made to her feelings, her daily doings were the outcome of so many erratic impulses acted on without consideration, merely to vary the disastrous monotony of those long idle afternoons.
The day after she had surprised her mother fretting over her letters, another packet arrived. Beth happened to be early up that morning, and opened the door to the postman. She would like to have given the packet back to him, but that being impossible, she carried it up to the acting-room and hid it in the roof. When her mother came down, however, she found to her consternation that the fact of there being no letter at all that morning was a greater trouble if anything than the arrival of the one the day before; so she boldly brought it down and delivered it, quite expecting to be whipped. But for once Mrs. Caldwell asked for an explanation, and the child's motive was so evident that even her mother was more affected by her sympathy than enraged by the inconvenient expression of it.
The next day she was playing on the pier with Bernadine. Her mother and Aunt Victoria were walking up and down, not paying much attention to the children. First they swung on a chain that was stretched from post to post down the middle of the pier to keep people from being washed off in stormy weather; but Bernadine tumbled over backwards and hurt her head, and was jeered at besides by some rude little street children, who could not understand why the little Caldwells, who were as shabby as themselves, should look down on them, and refuse to associate with them. It was not Beth's nature to be exclusive. She had no notion of differences of degree. Any pleasant person was her equal. She was as much gratified by friendly notice from the milkman, the fishwoman, and the sweep as from Lady Benyon or Count Bartahlinsky; and very early thought it contemptible to jeer at people for want of means and defects of education. She never talked of the "common people," after she found that Harriet was hurt by the phrase; and she would have been on good terms with all the street children had it not been for what Mrs. Caldwell called "Bernadine's superior self-respect." Bernadine told if Beth spoke to one of them, and as Beth had no friends amongst them as yet, she did not feel that their acquaintance was worth fighting for. But the street children resented the attitude of the two shabby little ladies, and were always watching for opportunities to annoy them. Accordingly, when Bernadine tumbled off the chain head-over-heels backwards, there was a howl of derision. "Oh my! Ain't she getten thin legs!" "Ah say, Julia, did you see that big 'ole i' her stockin'?" "Naw, but ah seed the patch on 'er petticoat!" "Eh—an' she's on'y getten one on, an' it isn't flannel." "An' them's ladies!"
Bernadine's pride came to her rescue on these occasions. At home she howled when she was hurt, but now she affected to laugh, and both sisters strolled off with their little heads up, and an exasperating air of indifference to the enemy. The tide was out, and they went down into the harbour and found a large oyster among the piles of the wooden jetty. When they got home, the difficulty was how to open it; but they managed to make it open itself by holding it over the kitchen fire on the shovel. When it began to lift its lid, Beth sent Bernadine for a fork, and while she was getting it Beth ate the oyster. But Bernadine could not see the joke, and her rage was not to be appeased even by the oyster-shell, which Beth said she might have the whole of.
The battle came off after dinner that evening But it was a day of disaster. Harriet was out of temper; and Mrs. Caldwell appeared mysteriously, just as Beth knocked Bernadine down and sat on her stomach.
They were reading a story of French life at that time, and something came into it about snail-broth as a cure for consumption, and snail-oil as a remedy for rheumatism. The next day there was a most extraordinary smell all over the house. Mrs. Caldwell, Aunt Victoria, Harriet, and Bernadine went sniffing about, but could find nothing to account for it. Beth sat at the dining-table with a book before her, taking no notice. At last Harriet had occasion to open the oven door, and just as she did so there was a loud explosion, and the kitchen wall opposite was bespattered with boiling animal matter. Beth had got up early, and collected snails enough in the garden to fill a blacking-bottle, corked them up tight, and put them into the darkest corner of the oven, her idea being to render them into oil, as Harriet rendered suet into fat, and go and rub rheumatic people with it. As usual, however, her motive was ignored, while a great deal was made of the mess on the kitchen wall—which disheartened her, especially as several other philanthropic enterprises happened to fail about the same time.