"What are you doing, child?" she said.
"O Aunt Victoria," Beth answered in a despairing way, "here's such a lovely thing, and my head will play it, only my fingers are not long enough."
Mildred had brought a quantity of new music home with her these holidays. She promised to play well also, and her aunt was having her properly taught. Beth listened to her enraptured when she first arrived, and then, to Mildred's surprise and admiration, tried the pieces herself, and in a few weeks knew all that it had taken Mildred six months to learn.
That morning, as ill-luck would have it, when she was waiting at the piano for her mother to come and give her her lesson, Beth began to try a piece with a passage in it that she could not play.
"Do show me how to do this," she said when Mrs. Caldwell came.
"Oh, you can't do that," Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed. "It is far too difficult for you."
"But I do so want to learn it," Beth ventured.
"Oh, very well," her mother answered. "But I warn you!"
Beth began, and got on pretty well till she came to the passage she did not understand, and there she stumbled.
"What are you doing?" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed.