They call me spindle-legs at school, and yesterday Jimmy
Marquess said,

'If I had a sister Mary that had eyes like that,
I'd put her out of pain with a baseball bat.'

"It ain't fair that I've got to be ugly."

Mrs. Burton, confronted with a situation she had not anticipated, found
herself unequipped with a reply, but Aunt Hannah's face became severe.

"You are as God made you, child," she announced in a tone of finality,
"and it's sinful to be dissatisfied."

But, if dissatisfaction was wicked, Mary was resolved upon sin. For the
first time in her eleven years of life she stood forth mutinous. Her
eyes blazed, and she trembled passionately through her slender
child-body, with her hands clenched into tight little fists.

"If God made me this way on purpose, He didn't treat me fair," she
rebelliously flamed out. "What good can it do God to have me skinny and
white, with eyes that don't even match?"

Aunt Hannah's face paled as though she feared that she must fall an
innocent victim to the avenging bolt which might momentarily be expected
to crash through the roof.

"Elizabeth," she gasped, "stop the child! Don't let her invite the wrath
of the Almighty like that! Tell her how wicked it is to complain an'
rebel against Infinite Wisdom."

They heard a low, rather contemptuous laugh, and saw Ham standing in the
door. His coarse lumberman's socks were pulled up over his trousers'
legs and splashed with mud of the stable lot.

"Aunt Hannah, what gave you the notion that there's anything wrong about
complainin'?" he demanded shortly, and Mary knew that she had acquired a
champion.

"Complainin' against God's will is a sin. Every person knows that." Aunt
Hannah spoke with the aggrieved uncertainty of one unexpectedly called
upon to defend an axiom. "An' for a girl to fret about her looks is
worldly."

"Oh, I see," the boy nodded slowly, but his voice was insurgent. "I
guess you think Almighty God wants the creatures He made to sit around
and sing about there bein' work to do. I wonder you don't feel afraid to
eat buckwheat cakes that He doesn't send down to you by an angel with
His compliments. My idea is that He wants folks to do things for
themselves and not to sing about it. As for being discontented, that's
the one thing that drives the world around. I think God made discontent
just for that."

Aunt Hannah moistened her lips. For decades she had been the member of a
God-fearing, toiling family whos