for some years cherished a dream that her ugly duckling
would develop into a swan and fly away with a fabulously wealthy prince.
Later she dwindled to a prayer that she might capture a man who was
"tol'able well-to-do."

The majority of ugly ducklings, however, grow up into uglier ducks, and
Mrs. Govers resigned herself to the melancholy prospect of the widowed
mother of an old maid perennial.

To the confusion of prophecy, among all the batch of girls who descended
on Carthage about the time of Ellaphine's birth--"out of the nowhere
into the here"--Ellaphine was the first to be married! And she cut out
the prettiest girl in the township--it was not such a small township,
either.

Those homely ones seem to make straight for a home the first thing.
Ellaphine carried off Eddie Pouch--the very Eddie of whom his mother
used to say, "He's little, but oh, my!" The rest of the people said,
"Oh, my, but he's little!"

Eddie's given name was Egbert. Edward was his taken name. He took it
after his mother died and he went to live at his uncle Loren's. Eddie
was sorry to change his name, but he said his mother was not responsible
at the time she pasted the label Egbert on him, and his shy soul could
not endure to be called Egg by his best friends--least of all by his
best girl.

His best girl was the township champion looker, Luella Thickins. From
the time his heart was big enough for Cupid to stick a child's-size
arrow in, Eddie idolized Luella. So did the other boys; and as Eddie was
the smallest of the lot, he was lost in the crowd. Even when Luella
noticed him it was with the atrocious contempt of little girls for
little boys they do not like.

Eddie could not give her sticks of candy or jawbreakers, for his uncle
Loren did not believe in spending money. And Eddie had no mother to go
to when the boys mistreated him and the girls ignored him. A dismal life
he led until he grew up as far as he ever grew up.

Eddie reached his twenty-second birthday and was working in Uncle
Loren's factory--one of the largest feather-duster factories in the
whole State--when he observed a sudden change in Luella's manner.

She had scared him away from paying court to her, save from a distance.
Now she took after him, with her aggressive beauty for a club and her
engaging smiles for a net. She asked him to take her to the
Sunday-school picnic, and asked him what he liked best for her to put in
for him. She informed him that she was going