Page:George Weston--The apple-tree girl.djvu/31

 But that morning she had watched Aunt Grace arrange her hair with the aid of two mirrors, and it gave her an idea. She ran down to the kitchen, where a little square mirror hung over the sink. This she took to her room, and then, standing sideways in front of her dresser, she gazed upon her profile for the first time in her life—gazed upon it in silence, as though she were scrutinizing a stranger who had come to live with her and whom she didn't know whether she was going to like or not.

"It's my nose," she finally told herself in a voice that had a little break in it. "And my chin."

Poor Charlotte! Up till then, you see, she had taken her beauty for granted, the same as she had taken the length of her hair and the brightness of her eyes; and then suddenly to find that her nose was beaky like her father's had been, that her chin was inclined to favor his too, and that a supposedly loving aunt