again. Mary
Makebelieve used to lift her timidly curious eye and smile in
deprecation of her nasal shortcomings, and then her mother would kiss
the dejected button and vow it was the dearest, loveliest bit of a nose
that had ever been seen.

"Big noses suit some people," said Mrs. Makebelieve, "but they do not
suit others, and one would not suit you, dearie. They go well with
black-haired people and very tall people, military gentlemen, judges
and apothecaries; but small, fair folk cannot support great noses. I
like my own nose," she continued. "At school, when I was a little
girl, the other girls used to laugh at my nose, but I always liked it,
and after a time other people came to like it also."

Mary Makebelieve had small, slim hands and feet: the palms of her
hands were softer than anything in the world; there were five little,
pink cushions on her palm: beginning at the little finger there was a
very tiny cushion, the next one was bigger, and the next bigger again,
until the largest ended a perfect harmony at the base of her thumb.
Her mother used to kiss these little cushions at times, holding back
the finger belonging to each, and naming it as she touched it. These
are the names of Mary Makebelieve's fingers, beginning with the
Thumb:--Tom Tumkins, Willie Winkles, Long Daniel, Bessie Bobtail and
Little Dick-Dick.

Her slight, girlish figure was only beginning to creep to the deeper
contours of womanhood, a half curve here and there, a sudden softness
in the youthful lines, certain angles trembling on the slightest of
rolls, a hint, a suggestion, the shadowy prophecy of circles and half
hoops that could not yet roll: the trip of her movements was troubled
sometimes to a sedater motion.

These things her mother's curiosity was continually recording,
sometimes with happy pride, but oftener in a kind of anger to find
that her little girl was becoming a big girl. If it had been possible
she would have detained her daughter forever in the physique of a
child; she feared the time when Mary would become too evidently a
woman, when all kinds of equalities would come to hinder her
spontaneous and active affection. A woman might object to be nursed,
while a girl would not; Mrs. Makebelieve feared that objection, and,
indeed, Mary, under the stimulus of an awakening body and a new,
strange warmth, was not altogether satisfied by being nursed or by
being the passive participant in these caresses. She sometimes thought