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 Lavender gallantly, though secretly he was a little hurt.

But he soon got over it. By the time Anne was one and a bit, he had decided that the only color for very small fat girls was fair. He used to gaze at her sometimes, and say to himself, "I shan't let her marry that fellow Winks now, she's much too good for him. She's lovely—and just like her Mother."

And then another very surprising thing happened. Her hair suddenly became red. Not golden-red or chestnut-red, but really-carrotty-red. Red! And nobody in Mr. Lavender's family or Mrs. Lavender's family had ever had red hair before!

It was then that one or two people began calling her Poor Anne. They didn't all do it at first—just one or two of them. "What a pity about Poor Anne," they said. "She used to have such lovely flaxen hair."