"Don't you feel better than you did this morning?"
"Oh, I am well enough in body; a little weak, that is all."
"You look quite tired. Suppose you lean your head against me and
take a short nap?"
"You are very good indeed; but I am not at all sleepy."
Clara was engaged in drawing, and, looking on, Beulah became
interested in the progress of the sketch. Suddenly a hand was placed
over the paper, and a tall, handsome girl, with black eyes and
sallow complexion, exclaimed sharply: "For Heaven's sake, Clara Sanders, do you expect to swim into the
next world on a piece of drawing-paper? Come over to my seat and
work out that eighth problem for me. I have puzzled over it all the
morning, and can't get it right."
"I can show you here quite as well." Taking out her Euclid, she
found and explained the obstinate problem.
"Thank you! I cannot endure mathematics, but father is bent upon my
being 'thorough,' as he calls it. I think it is all thorough
nonsense. Now, with you it is very different; you expect to be a
teacher, and of course will have to acquire all these branches; but
for my part I see no use in it. I shall be rejoiced when this dull
school-work is over."
"Don't say that, Cornelia; I think our school days are the happiest,
and feel sad when I remember that mine are numbered."
Here the bell announced recess over, and Cornelia moved away to her
seat. A trembling hand sought Clara's arm.
"Is that Cornelia Graham?"
"Yes. Is she not very handsome?"
Beulah made no answer; she only remembered that this girl was
Eugene's adopted sister, and, looking after the tall, queenly form,
she longed to follow her and ask all the particulars of the storm.
Thus ended the first dreaded day at school, and, on reaching home,
Beulah threw herself on her bed with a low, wailing cry. The long-
pent sorrow must have vent, and she sobbed until weariness sank her
into a heavy sleep.
Far out in a billowy sea, strewed with wrecks, and hideous with the
ghastly, upturned faces of floating corpses, she and Eugene were
drifting--now clinging to each other--now tossed asunder by howling
waves. Then came a glimmering sail on the wide waste of waters; a
little boat neared them, and Lilly leaned over the side and held out
tiny, dimpled hands to lift them in. They were climbing out of their
watery graves, and Lilly's long, fair curls already touched their
cheeks, when a strong arm snatched Lilly back, and struck them down
into the roaring gulf, and above the white faces of the drifting
dead stood Mrs. Grayson, sailing away with Lilly struggling in her
arms. Eugene was sinking and Beulah could not reach him; he held up
his arms imploringly toward her, and called upon her to save him,
and then his head with its wealth of silken, brown locks
disappeared. She ceased to struggle; she welcomed drowning now that
he had gone to rest among coral temples. She sank down--down. The
rigid corpses were no longer visible. She was in an emerald palace,
and myriads of rosy shells paved the floors. At last she found
Eugene reposing on a coral bank, and playing with pearls; she
hastened to join him, and was just taking his hand when a horrible
phantom, seizing him in its arms, bore him away, and, looking in its
face, she saw that it was Mrs. Chilton. With a wild scream of
terror, Beulah awoke. She was lying across the foot of the bed, and
both hands were thrown up, grasping the post convulsively. The room
was dark, save where the moonlight crept through the curtains and
fell slantingly on the picture of Hope and the Pilgrims, and by that
dim light she saw a tall form standing near her.