nd to me.

''Yes, she has just gone to her room.'

''Well, I don't know what's the matter with the child since last night,
she's acted so queer. I 'spect she'll get over it, though; she always
did have tantrums.'

'In one sense, however, she never did get over it, and it was many years
before she really recovered much of her old light-heartedness, although
she had an appearance of it to superficial companions. For a long time
her inner life was shut from the view of her friends; but I am at
present able to read it for you, partly from what she herself told me
afterward, and partly from that insight which we all have into those
lives and experiences with which we are in sympathy.

'One afternoon she left me very happy and gay, and went to see a friend
near the town. She was returning slowly toward home, satisfied with
herself, and enjoying intensely the beauty of the season, when she saw
two ladies approaching her. They were strangers, and she looked at them
with interest, attracted by their pleasing faces and graceful bearing.
As they passed her, she overheard one of them say in an undertone, 'What
a frightfully homely girl!'

'There could be no mistake. She only was meant, and the words went like
a sharp dagger to her heart.

'While she was thinking how charming they were, she to them appeared
only frightful. The whole future in an instant opened before her, and
she saw herself, as she moved through it, constantly exciting, wherever
she went, only repulsion in the minds of strangers and friends.

'All the charm and interest of life fled at the moment. That day and the
next she was in a stupor of grief, from which she was first awakened by
my tones of sympathy. My advice, too, opened a door of relief by giving
her something to _do_. For the first time she remembered there was a
Being who knew all about her sorrow, knew it was coming, understood its
cause, and its effects. This Being she could open her mind to, and only
to Him. He would not be surprised, and He would not annoy her with
sympathy which could not cure and would only irritate. She knelt down,
and with minute fidelity told Him every thought of her heart. The next
day she felt cheerful--she thought she was resigned; but it was only the
reaction caused by the tears and confession of the previous night, and
it soon passed away. The words 'frightfully homely' echoed and re-echoed
through her heart. All that was dreary, hopeless, and miserable
clustered ar