ted
for nothing. It was really a bad sign if an infant were conspicuously
pretty. She had no nose to speak of, and a mouth of enormous
proportions. What of that? Babies' noses always were small, and the
mouth would not grow in proportion to the rest of the features. In a
few months she would no doubt be as charming as her sisters had been
before her; but, alas! Pixie disappointed that expectation, as she was
fated to disappoint most expectations during her life. Her nose refused
to grow bigger, her mouth to grow smaller, her small twinkling eyes
disdained the lashes which were so marked a feature in the faces of her
sisters, and her hair was thin and straight, and refused to grow beyond
her neck, whereas Bridgie and Esmeralda had curling manes so long that,
as their nurse proudly pointed out to other nurses, they could sit on
them, the darlints! and that to spare.

There was no disguising the fact that she was an extraordinarily plain
child, and as the years passed by she grew ever plainer and plainer, and
showed less possibility of improvement. The same contrariety of fate
which made Bridget look like Patricia, made Patricia look like Bridget,
and Mrs O'Shaughnessy often thought regretfully of her broken
principle. "Indeed it's a judgment on me!" she would cry; but always as
she said the words she hugged her baby to her breast, and showered
kisses on the dear, ugly little face, wondering in her heart if she had
ever loved a child so much before, or if any of Pixie's beautiful
sisters and brothers had had such strange, fascinating little ways. At
the age when most infants are content to blink, she smiled accurately
and with intent; when three months old she would look up from her pillow
with a twinkling glance, as who would say, "Such an adventure as I've
had with these cot curtains! You wait a few months until I can speak,
and I'll astonish you about it!" And when she could sit up she
virtually governed the nursery. The shrewdness of the glance which she
cast upon her sisters quite disturbed the enjoyment of those young
ladies in the pursuance of such innocent tricks as making lakes of ink
in the laps of their clean pinafores, or scratching their initials on
newly painted doors, and she waved her rattle at them with such an
imperious air that they meekly bowed their heads, and allowed her to tug
at their curls without reproach.

The whole family vied with each other in adoring the ugly duckling, and
in h