r describe downrightly in what it
consists; it is always only the want of certain things which, when you
have them at their full size, make up what folks call ugliness. Come
now, tell me, such as I am, what do you think the most hideous thing
about me?"

"My dear old dame," said the youth in confusion....

"No," she cried, "plump out with the truth, and without any flattery.
Everybody, you know, has some odd maggot or other; and as for me, I
pride myself no little on being utterly without all those things which
in the world they christen handsome. Now let me see your taste! speak
out!"

"If I must," stammered Antonio, while in spite of his grief a smile
curled his lips, "those two teeth are ... to my mind...."

"Ha, ha!" cried the old woman laughing aloud, "my two dear good old
black teeth are what pleases you the least about me. I can well
believe it: they stand like two scorcht palisades among the ruins of a
fortress in the wide empty space there. But you should have seen me
ten years back; then matters were much worse still. In those days I
had a whole mouth full of such portentous grinders; and they who loved
me would say it lookt frightful. Well, one by one they fell out, and
these two alone are left behind the last of all their race. When they
are once gone, my jaws will clap together like two doors, the upper
lip will grow just thrice as long, and again one can't tell what sort
of a face will come of it. Time, my dear young friend, is, as somebody
found out many many years ago, a bungling workman; he makes a creature
pretty enough; then he daubs and trims and pares and pulls and
squeezes the thing about, draws the nose and chin out of their
sheaths, knocks in the cheeks, eats ruts into the forehead, till he
has turned it into a scarecrow; and then at last he gets ashamed,
smashes the whole wretched concern to pieces, and shovels it over with
earth that all the world may not see his disgrace. Your cheeks too,
smooth and polisht as they are, will not be so like a roseleaf by and
by. Here! let me look! verily you have the rarest pearls of
toothikins! a pity they must be used in chewing bread and roast beef.
Hey, hey! shew them to me ... wider open with the mouth ... but they
stand very oddly ... hem! and that eyetooth! there is meaning in all
that."

Antonio knew not whether to scold or laugh; however he constrained
himself to be calm, and to let the old woman have her chatter; for
owing, as it seemed, to her