"Who is that playing so fast?" she said. "Was it you, Miss Caldwell?"
"Yes," Beth answered.
"Then you must go into a higher class," said Miss Tait.
But the same thing happened in every class until at last Beth had run up through them all, as up a flight of stairs, into Old Tom's first. Her piano in the first, when the whole class was present and she had no choice, was a hard old instrument, usually avoided because it was the nearest to the table at which Old Tom sat (when she did not walk about) during a lesson. The first time Beth took her place at it, the other girls were only beginning to assemble, and Old Tom was not in the room. A great teasing of instruments, as Old Tom called it, was going on. A new piece was to be taken that morning, and each girl began to try it as soon as she sat down, so that they were all at different passages. They stopped, however, and looked up when Beth appeared.
"That's your piano," the head girl said.
"I hope you'll like it!" one of the others added sarcastically.
"Oh, but I'm glad to be here!" said Beth, striking a few firm chords. "Now I feel like Chopin," and she burst out into one of his most brilliant waltzes triumphantly.
Old Tom had come in while she was speaking, but Beth did not see her. Old Tom waited till she had done.
"Oh, so now ye feel like Chopin, Miss Caldwell," she jeered. "And it appears ye are not above shamming nervous when it suits ye to mak' yerself interesting. I shall remember that."
Old Tom taught by a series of jeers and insults. If a girl were poor, she never failed to remind her of the fact. "But, indeed, ye're beggars all," was her favourite summing up when they stumbled at troublesome passages. Most of the girls cowered under her insults, but Beth looked her straight in the face at this second encounter, and at the third her spirit rose and she argued the point. Old Tom tried to shout her down, but Beth left her seat, and suggested that they should go and get Miss Clifford to decide between them. Then Old Tom subsided, and from that time she and Beth were on amicable terms.