"I shall never be able to make you understand, Caroline," Captain Caldwell exclaimed. "Little pitchers are generally bad enough, but when there is large intelligence added to the long ears, they're the devil."
Before the doctor left he said to Mrs. Caldwell, "We must keep our patient amused, you know."
"O doctor!" Beth exclaimed, clasping her hands in her earnestness, "do you think if Sophie Keene came?"
The doctor burst into a shout of laughter, in which Captain Caldwell also joined. "Just stay here yourself, Beth," he said, when he had recovered himself. "For amusement, neither Sophie Keene nor any one else I ever knew could hold a candle to you."
"What's 'hold a candle to you'?" Beth instantly demanded.
And then there was more laughter, in which even Mrs. Caldwell joined; and afterwards, when the doctor had gone, she actually patted Beth on the back, and stroked her hair, which was the first caress Beth ever remembered to have received from her mother.
"Now, mamma," she exclaimed, with great feeling, in the fulness of her surprise and delight, "now I shall forget that you ever beat me."
Her mother coloured painfully.
Her father muttered something about a noble nature.
"And that was the child you never wanted at all!" slipped, with a ring of triumph, from Mrs. Caldwell unawares—an interesting example of the complexity of human feelings.