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 “No, not a bit,” Cornelli returned curtly. “I know quite well that he won’t have anything to do with me, and I know why, too. I do not care whether it is a boy or a girl. I don’t want him.”

“But Cornelli, you never used to be that way. You used to be so friendly and bright with everybody. What has happened to you?” asked Martha, quite grieved. “You do not look about you with bright eyes and your hair hangs too low on your face. Can’t I push it back a little?”

Martha, fetching a comb, was going to touch Cornelli’s hair, when Cornelli hindered her by crying out: “No, Martha, leave it! It has to stay that way all my life.”

“Oh, no, I won’t believe that. Why should your face be half covered up? One can hardly recognize you,” Martha said regretfully. “What do the ladies say about it?”

“Miss Dorner says that I am the most obstinate being in the whole world, and that no one can ever set me right,” was Cornelli’s truthful information. Then she added: “She says that no child on earth looks as ugly as I do and