Emily appeared with a bad toothache one day, and finding a remedy for it gave Beth a momentary interest in life. She told Emily she had a cure for toothache, and Emily, never doubting, let her put some soft substance into the tooth with the end of a match.
"It won't taste very nice," said Beth; "but you mustn't mind that. You just go home, and you'll find it won't ache any more."
When Emily returned next day she gratefully proclaimed herself cured, and her mother wanted to know "whatever the stuff was."
"Soap," said Beth.
"Oh, you mucky thing!" Emily exclaimed. She resented the application of such a substance to the inside of her person. Her plebeian mind was too narrow to conceive a second legitimate use for soap, and from that day Beth's influence declined. Emily's attendance became irregular, then gradually ceased altogether; not, however, before Beth's own interest in the lessons was over, and her mind much occupied with other things.
CHAPTER XVII
The dower-house of the Benyon family stood in a street which was merely an extension of Orchard Street, and could be seen from Mrs. Caldwell's windows. Lady Benyon, having produced a huge family, and buried her husband, had done her day's work in the world, as it were, and now had full leisure to live as she liked; so she "lived well"; and in the intervals of living, otherwise eating, she sat in the big bow-window of her sitting-room, digesting, and watching her neighbours. From her large old-fashioned house she commanded a fine view down the wide irregular front street to the sea, with a diagonal glimpse down two other streets which ran parallel with the front street; while on the left she could see up Orchard Street as far as the church; so that everybody came under her observation sooner or later, and, to Beth, it always seemed that she dominated the whole place. Most of the day her head could be seen above the wire-blind; but, as she seldom went out, her acute old face and the four dark sausage-shaped curls, laid horizontally on either side of it, were almost all of her that was known to the inhabitants.
Mrs. Caldwell went regularly to see Lady Benyon, and sometimes took the children with her. On one occasion when she had done so, Lady Benyon made her take a seat in the window where she was sitting herself, so that they could both look out. Beth and Bernadine sat in the background with a picture-book, in which they seemed so absorbed that the conversation flowed on before them with very little constraint. Beth's ears were open, however, as usual.
"After twenty-two children," Lady Benyon remarked, "one cannot expect to be as active as one was."