ll into their mouths directly they open them, because it
gets to be a sort of matter of course that they should have everything,
and do exactly as they like."

"And the plain ones--they are born at a worse disadvantage still."

"No, they are not. Look at Rose. Francie, with her gilded wretchedness,
thinks Rosie's lot quite despicable; but I can tell you, Molly, she is
the most utterly comfortable and contented little soul on the face of
this earth. She would not change places with a queen." "But Rose is not
plain. Rose is the happy medium. And THEY are the lucky ones--the
inconspicuous people--the every-day sort--"

"What's luck?" Deb vaguely moralised. "I suppose we make our luck. It
doesn't depend on our faces, but on ourselves."

"Ah, no!" Mrs Goldsworthy received the well-worn platitude with a
laugh. "We don't make anything--we are made. It is just a dance of
marionettes, Debbie. Poor puppets of flesh and blood, treated as if
they were just wood and nails and glue! Who set us up to make a game of
us like this? Who DOES pull the strings, Debbie? It is a mystery to me."

Then Deb waited for what was coming next.

"Possibly it will be cleared up some day," she murmured, putting out
her strong, beautiful hand to touch her sister's knee. "Whether it is a
fairy tale or not, one must cherish the hope--"

"Not I," Mary cut in swiftly--that same Mary who was once conspicuous
in her family for pious orthodoxy. "No more experiments in human
existence for me! A few years of peace and cleanness, as I am--as I now
am--I hope for that, and for nothing more; I don't want anything
more--I'd rather not. To be let alone for the rest of the time, and
then to be done with it--that sums up all the hope I have, or need."

"Ah, my dear--"

"No, Debbie, don't look at me with those eyes--don't pity me in that
tone of voice. I am only a heathen against my will--not so
broken-hearted as not to care what happens to me, which I believe is
what you think. I am not even sorry--I wish I was, but I can't be; in
fact, I am so happy, really, that I am going about in a sort of dream,
trying to realise it."

"HAPPY!"

"Perhaps 'happy' is not the word. I should say unmiserable. I am more
unmiserable than I have ever been, I think, since I was born."

Deb's swift intelligence grasped the truth. "Ah, then she was not so
insensate as we thought!"--but made allowance for what she diagnosed as
a morbid condition of mental health.

"Are you hap