Description
The Adventures of an Ugly Girl
CHAPTER I.
“As ithers see us.”—BURNS.
“COME, Dora! I shall never be ready, if you don’t make haste. They will
be here in ten minutes, and my hair is not half so nice as it ought to
be, thanks to your carelessness.”
“You are very good to ignore my own claims to attention so utterly. I
have been helping you this half-hour and have barely time enough left to
change my frock. To make my own hair presentable is impossible now.”
“Why, what does it matter how your hair is dressed, or what sort of a
gown you put on? You may just as well spare your pains, for
unfortunately nothing that you can do seems to mitigate your ugliness.
I’m sure I cannot think where you get it. You are—”
But, somehow, I did not feel inclined to wait for the end of Belle’s
encouraging lecture. Perhaps it was because I was so often treated to my
beautiful elder sister’s homilies that they had lost the spark of
novelty and had acquired a chestnuty flavor. Perhaps I failed to
recognize any generosity in her persistent efforts to nip such latent
buds of vanity as from time to time tried to thrust their poor little
heads above the chill crust of ridicule and contumely. Perhaps I was
really as bad-tempered as I was said to be. Anyhow, my behavior could
not claim to be either quiet or elegant as I stormily quitted Belle’s
room, slamming the door behind me with such violence as to elicit from
my more well-bred sister a little shriek of affected dismay. So far from
feeling sorry that I had given Belle’s nerves a shock, I wished
viciously that her fingers had been jammed in the doorway, or that
something equally disastrous had occurred to take off the edge of her
conceit and
Product ID: 9781776808410
Sku: 9781776808410
