g such things I
should be very firm with her."

"Lily Jennings is a very pretty child," said Mother-in-law Wheeler, with
an under-meaning, and Mrs. Diantha flushed. Amelia did not in the least
resemble the Wheelers, who were a handsome set. She looked remarkably
like her mother, who was a plain woman, only little Amelia did not have
a square chin. Her chin was pretty and round, with a little dimple in
it. In fact, Amelia's chin was the prettiest feature she had. Her hair
was phenomenally straight. It would not even yield to hot curling-irons,
which her grandmother Wheeler had tried surreptitiously several times
when there was a little girls' party. "I never saw such hair as that
poor child has in all my life," she told the other grandmother, Mrs.
Stark. "Have the Starks always had such very straight hair?"

Mrs. Stark stiffened her chin. Her own hair was very straight. "I don't
know," said she, "that the Starks have had any straighter hair than
other people. If Amelia does not have anything worse to contend with
than straight hair I rather think she will get along in the world as
well as most people."

"It's thin, too," said Grandmother Wheeler, with a sigh, "and it hasn't
a mite of color. Oh, well, Amelia is a good child, and beauty isn't
everything." Grandmother Wheeler said that as if beauty were a great
deal, and Grandmother Stark arose and shook out her black silk skirts.
She had money, and loved to dress in rich black silks and laces.

"It is very little, very little indeed," said she, and she eyed
Grandmother Wheeler's lovely old face, like a wrinkled old rose as to
color, faultless as to feature, and swept about by the loveliest waves
of shining silver hair.

Then she went out of the room, and Grandmother Wheeler, left alone,
smiled. She knew the worth of beauty for those who possess it and those
who do not. She had never been quite reconciled to her son's marrying
such a plain girl as Diantha Stark, although she had money. She
considered beauty on the whole as a more valuable asset than mere gold.
She regretted always that poor little Amelia, her only grandchild, was
so very plain-looking. She always knew that Amelia was very plain, and
yet sometimes the child puzzled her. She seemed to see reflections
of beauty, if not beauty itself, in the little colorless face, in the
figure, with its too-large joints and utter absence of curves. She
sometimes even wondered privately if some subtle resemblance to the
h