BETHE QUEERIN PLACE by Marion Ames Taggart. It was one of those real-life Christmas days, and Queerin Place was apparently trying to run in from Sixth Avenue out of the wet, trusting to its small size to prevent any rain from falling upon it. Queerin Place should never be in bustling, busy New York, even in the finest weather; it is a brief little "place," slanting westward from the big thoroughfare in the bias fashion characteristic of Greenwich Village and its neighborhood, and it looks precisely like a place in a Dickens story, with its uniform row of little brick houses, its solitary lamp-post, straggling vines, and miniature front yards. It has a prison on one hand, it is true, but it is far and away from having a palace on the other; and in no other way than the prison on one hand does it suggest anything Venetian. There was nothing to distinguish the bassviol player's house from its neighbors; but to Beth Esling, the bass-viol player's little granddaughter, it had a distinct personality, the indefinable something that makes one's home look wholly different from any other house. Beth was fourteen, and all these to her- -many years of her life had been spent in that little Queerin Place home. Being a very sunny and home loving little body by nature, she loved the humble house with all her heart, and to her eyes it was always pretty and attractive. So it was not discontent that gave her face an expression as little like Christmas eve as the one the skies wore: Beth was struggling with a sense of duty, and a natural regret which even the recollection of the party she was to give that evening could not banish indeed, the duty and the regret were all mixed up with the party. "For years," as Beth would have said sincerely, in reality for nearly one whole year,she had worshiped at the shrine of Lois Akers, the prettiest of all the girls in the Greenwich Avenue school, and the nicest, as she thought, though there were those of her mates who would have greatly shocked her by excepting bright-eyed Beth herself, who was not pretty, but whose sunny temper, absolute frankness, and unselfishness made her thoroughly lovable. Lois liked Beth. If it had not been for what Mr. Moddle, in " Martin Chuzzlewit," delicately termed "another," Beth Esling would have been Lois's dearest friend. As it was, she had been only second best, and second place is hard to fill when one loves with a devotion equal to a "double first," if there ever is such a grade as this in friendship. Lois's chosen chum, preferred to all the world, was Emily Harkness; and for Em's sake Beth was put aside. But since Thanksgiving the situation had changed: a misunderstanding had arisen between Lois and Emily. From closest arm-entwining, secret-exchanging intimacy they had passed to complete estrangement, avoiding each other at recess, going home on opposite sides of the street, and, when fate forced them to meet, studying the heavens with an intentness worthy of a Herschel without a telescope. In her loneliness Lois had turned for comfort to Beth, and for a whole month Beth had joyfully filled the place Em left vacant - too indifferent or too sweet-tempered, as one chose to regard it, to resent what in her heart she knew for truth, that Lois would have preferred Emily to her at the very worst stage of the quarrel, and had only let her play a rôle similar to that attributed by Hamlet to "imperious Cæsar, dead and turned to clay." She filled the void left cold and blank by Emily's unkindness. And now, just when she was beginning to hope that Lois was really getting ready to love her best, the key to the misunderstanding between the girls had accidentally fallen into Beth's hands. By a chance word overheard at school she knew that Emily had never said the cruel thing Lois believed she had said of her; and in her upright and unselfish heart Beth knew it was for her to set the crooked straight, give Lois back her friend, and sink once more to her old second place in Lois's affections. It was not easy; Beth had shed some tears on her pillow the previous night, but she had never for a moment hesitated in her determination to do right, at whatever cost to herself; and that was why she was making the cake for her Christmas-eve party with a sober little face that matched the gray skies outside. "What do you want for your Christmas, Beth?" asked eight-year-old Elsie, for the twentieth time at least, as she balanced herself on the arm of her chair. She was in such throes of desire to tell her sister what she had for her that Beth felt it was cruel not to let her speak and free her mind of its burden. "Nothing in the world," she answered, however, just as she had answered each previous time—“unless it is something to cover that hole in the carpet," she added, glancing ruefully at the worn place where her grandfather rested the end of his big bass viol when he practised. Beth recognized the necessity for much practice when one occupied the distinguished place held by her grandfather in a big Broadway theater; but, remembering her party that evening, and how pretty Emily Harkness's home on West Eleventh Street was, with its polished floors and beautiful rugs, she could find it in her heart to wish that Mr. Esling would not practise precisely in the middle of their tiny parlor, where one could never cover the worn spot with the smallest chair or footstool without a deadly certainty of sending some unfortunate victim tripping into the fireplace. "Five eggs," said Beth, glancing at the cook-book, "and a cup of milk- that's all right. Oh, baking-powder! Elsie dear, would you mind asking grandma for the bakingpowder? And the raisins ?" she called as the little girl ran away. "They 're on the second shelf, right-hand side; I stoned them last night." Grandma was making some of her famous steamed custards for Beth's party; she was willing and glad to do it, but only with the stipu lation that Beth was to leave her the kitchen in solitude. One moment too long, and the steamed custards would "separate"; one moment too little steaming, and they would be underdone; for such a delicate task Grandmother Esling could not share her domain with a cake-maker, so, there being no one to be shocked, Beth had taken her ingredients into the parlor, and there was whipping her cake into a degree of "goodness" that almost proved the efficacy of corporal punishment. "Here they are!" cried Elsie, running back into the parlor. "Here they are! And grandma says she thinks those custards will be done in ten minutes, and you can put your cake in the minute they 're out." "All right; thanks, Elsie," said Beth, sifting the flour with its baking-powder contents into the cake, and adding the raisins from the small bowl in a delightful mass. "Now I'll tell you one least bit of a Christmas present you 're to have you are to sit up for my party till the very last girl has gone home." he, truly, Elsie?" cried Beth, scattering flour recklessly in her excitement. Elsie nodded hard, being prevented from "I know it; grandma told me," said Elsie. speaking for the moment by half a ginger cooky. "IT'S YOUR CHRISTMAS PRESENT, BETH!' SHE GURGLED.' (SEE PAGE 144) "Three violins, one harp, a flute, grandpa himself with the big fiddle- they 're all going to play for you; I 'm almost crazy!" cried Elsie, getting rid of the impediment to her speech in an incredibly short time. Beth's face cleared of all trace of worry. With a shout of triumph, she snatched her small sister around the waist and executed a sort of inspired fandango. "It's simply fine!" she cried. "Only think! a regular orchestra ! Why, none of the girls ever have had more than a piano-player, except Minnie Ivers, when her brother played the violin for us. But he was only taking lessons, and he could n't do much; he tried the Intermezzo,' and nearly broke down. Still, he was n't so bad in a waltz and two-step," added Beth, with the kindly patronage of her musical inheritance. 6 "Yes," said Elsie; "and grandpa says when you 're tired dancing and playing games he is going to get the gentlemen to play Christmas carols. and German Lieder, and "And I know a little surprise that you are to they'll sing, and we 'll all sing, and end up have; it's something about music." "Oh, did grandpa get some of the orchestra? He said once he thought he might. Did with a regular old-time Christmas; that's what he said." "Now won't that be too perfectly lovely?" cried Beth. "We can't dance much; we have n't room: but we can give the girls the kind of time they can't get in big houses"; and she gave her bowl a twirl expressing her delight as she tilted it to pour the mixture, lumpy with its raisins, into the pan. Alas! perfect joy is of brief duration in a workaday world; even on Christmas eve it is uncertain! A treacherous bit of butter had secreted itself on the brim of poor Beth's bowl, and in her moment of triumph undid her. The twirl of joy ended in a wild scurry of the bowl through her slippery fingers, and it alighted, bottom up, in the middle of the floor, depositing the cake dough, raisins and all, right in the spot worn bare by Grandpa Esling's practising. For a moment Beth and Elsie stared in horror-stricken silence at the wreck; then Elsie tumbled down on the floor beside the cake to laugh as only a girl of eight, without responsibilities, can laugh at a catastrophe. "It's your Christmas present, Beth!" she gurgled. "You said you wanted something to cover the spot in the carpet, and you 've got it! Oh, my, ain't it awful, but ain't it awful funny!" Beth's good nature gave out. "Elsie Esling," she said indignantly, "you ought to have a good whipping! Here I 've been I've working and working, and stoning raisins all night," which was a slight exaggeration, "and I 've got to go out, and I 'd like to know what there is funny about it, or where you think any more cake is to come from?" And Beth's indignation ended in a burst of tears. Elsie's indecorous sense of humor fled in merited disgrace at the sight of her beloved sister's tears; she never could bear to have Beth cry, and she rarely had to. Of all days in the three hundred and sixty-five, the last for such unusual grief was surely Christmas eve. Elsie at once got on her feet and flung her arms around Beth. "Don't cry, Bethlings," she whispered. "I'm dreadful sorry I laughed. I've got twenty-five cents grandpa gave me for Christmas candy; I'll give it to you for cake, and don't you mind about the dough. We can save some of it and bake it anyway." To Elsie's delight, Beth laughed at this, and kissed her. "I did n't mean to scold, pet; it was funny, and you may laugh. I guess we could n't use even the top, though. But I don't want your money. Grandma will know a way to make time for more cake. Let's get this up, and then I 'm going to see Lois. I'm glad grandma's favorite bowl did n't break." Again in a low-spirited mood, because of a mishap that would have tried the patience of an older cook, Beth pattered along in her rubbers and mackintosh for her last call on Lois as her special friend. And, moreover, her errand, though appropriate to the season, since it was to restore peace, would, by disclosing Emily's innocence, result in the loss of her own coveted position as Lois's chum. Lois Lois was at home, and for one cowardly moment Beth was tempted to keep silence. was so pretty and attractive in her soft red housedress! No one would ever know that it had been in Beth's power to straighten matters, even if Lois and Emily became friends again later without her aid. But Beth conquered the mean feeling without much effort, and told her little tale to Lois, dropping her eyes to shut out the sight of the glad light dawning in those of her friend as she listened. "That is a Christmas present worth having, Beth!" said Lois, at the end. "I'll see Emily at your house to-night, and I 'll beg her pardon for not trusting her, and we 'll have a merry Christmas. To tell the honest truth, I was feeling as though I did n't care whether Christmas came or not this year; of course I had you, but it made me just wretched to think my own, most intimate friend was n't mine any longer. You have been such a dear all the way through; if it had n't been for you I could n't have borne it; and now you have really made me a present of Emily." That night fourteen girls and ten more or less reluctant boys gathered in the little house in Queerin Place. There was not the slightest danger of any one discovering the worn place in the carpet; for once it was thoroughly covered. Upstairs Beth, the hostess, tried not to be jealous as she saw Lois whispering earnestly to Emily, and then both girls fall on each other's shoulders in a manner most dangerous to lovelocks, however assuring of restored love. And in the warmth of that affection, starved for a |