one's
own always looks different to them, I suppose."

"Then you don't think it did?" said Maria. Tears actually stood in
her beautiful blue eyes.

"No, I don't," replied her mother, abruptly. "Nobody in their sober
senses could think so. I am sorry poor Mrs. Cone lost her baby. I
know how I felt when my first baby died, but as for saying it looked
like you--"

"Then you don't think it did, mother?"

"It was one of the homliest babies I ever laid my eyes on, poor
little thing, if it did die," said Maria's mother, emphatically. She
was completely disarmed by this time. But when she saw Maria glance
again at the glass she laid hold of her moral weapons, the wielding
of which she believed to be for the best spiritual good of her child.
"Your aunt Maria was very much better looking than you at her age,"
she repeated, firmly. Then, at the sight of the renewed quiver around
the sensitive little mouth her heart melted. "Get out of your clothes
and into your night-gown, and get to bed, child," said she. "You look
well enough. If you only behave as well as you look, that is all that
is necessary."

Chapter III

Maria fell asleep that night with the full assurance that she had not
been mistaken concerning the beauty of the little face which she had
seen in the looking-glass. All that troubled her was the
consideration that her aunt Maria, whose homely face seemed to glare
out of the darkness at her, might have looked just as she did when
she was her age. She hoped, and then she hoped that the hope was not
wicked, that she might die young rather than live to look like her
aunt Maria. She pictured with a sort of pleasurable horror, what a
lovely little waxen-image she would look now, laid away in a nest of
white flowers. She had only just begun to doze, when she awoke with a
great start. Her father had opened her door, and stood calling her.

"Maria," he said, in an agitated voice.

Maria sat up in bed. "Oh, father, what is it?" said she, and a vague
horror chilled her.

"Get up, and slip on something, and go into your mother's room," said
her father, in a gasping sort of voice. "I've got to go for the
doctor."

Maria put one slim little foot out of bed. "Oh, father," she said,
"is mother sick?"

"Yes, she is very sick," replied her father. His voice sounded almost
savage. It was as if he were furious with his wife for being ill,
furious with Maria, with life, and death itself. In reality he was
torn almost t