Page:Cornelli (IA cornelli00spyr 0).pdf/157

 especially when I frown. I have to make a cross face all the time, for I cannot be jolly any more and can never laugh again. So the bumps keep on growing and in the end they will be just like regular horns. Then everyone will hate me, for nobody else has horns. I can do nothing now but hide them, but in the end they will come through and then my hair won’t hide them any more. Then everybody can see it and people will despise me and children will be sure to throw stones after me. Oh!”

Cornelli again put her head on her arms and groaned in her great trouble. Dino had listened, full of astonishment. He had never before heard anything like that.

“But, Cornelli,” he said, “why do you frown all the time, if the bumps grow when you do it? It would be so much better if you would think of funny things and would try to laugh. If you always made a pleasant face they would perhaps go away entirely.”

“I can’t! I can’t possibly do it,” Cornelli lamented. “I know that I make a horrid face and that I am so ugly that nobody wants to look at me. Whenever anybody looks at me I