_except_ that."

But her mother thought it best to take no further notice, only in her
own heart she said to herself, "Was there _ever_ such a child?"

In spite of all she had said Rosy felt, what she would not have owned
for the world, a good deal of curiosity about the little girl who was
to come to live with them. And now and then, in her cross and unhappy
moods, a sort of strange confused _hope_ would creep over her
that Beata's coming would bring her a kind of good luck.

"Everybody says she's so good, and everybody loves her," thought Rosy,
"p'raps I'll find out how she does it."

And the days passed on, on the whole, after the storm I have told you
about, rather more peaceably than before, till one evening when Rosy
was saying good-night her mother said to her quietly,

"Rosy, I had a letter this morning from Beata's uncle; he is bringing
her to-morrow. She will be here about four o'clock in the afternoon."

"To-morrow!" said Rosy, and then, without saying any more, she kissed
her mother and went to bed.

She went to sleep that evening, and she woke the next morning with a
strange jumble of feelings in her mind, and a strange confusion of
questions waiting to be answered.

"What would Beata be like? She was sure to be pretty--all people that
other people love very much were pretty, Rosy thought. And she