down and helped
to make the crown. Very pretty she looked as she sat on the mossy bank,
while her hands worked in and out among the bright coloured leaves. A
stranger looking at the two sisters, would have wondered why the girls
had passed by Belle, and chosen the plain though pleasant-faced Nannie.
So one would think that looked only on the outside; but could one have
looked within, they would soon have understood the reason of the choice.

After the crowning of the queen, which was performed with all due
ceremony, the children went home, following Stony Brook till it poured
its waters into the little river on which the village was built.

After they reached home, Belle went upstairs, and sitting down by the
window, gave free vent to the angry thoughts she had been keeping under
all the afternoon.

"I don't see," she said to herself at last, "what makes the difference.
I know I'm a great deal prettier than Nannie;" and she went across and
looked at herself in the glass. "Yes, I am a great deal prettier, and
yet the girls all love Nannie better. And I can learn a lesson twice as
quick, and yet Miss Taylor likes Nannie better than me, and helps her
out of all her difficulties. And father, and mother, and sister Mary,
all think there's nobody like Nannie, and they are always scolding me
for something or other. I wish people would love me as they do Nannie. I
would rather be the ugliest person in the world and be loved." She was
silent for a moment, while conscience brought before her all the kind
acts Nannie was always doing for somebody. How ready she was to give up
her own pleasure, and do anything for others. Then she went off into a
pleasant day-dream, in which she was very good, always did just right,
and everybody loved her. All the old women in the village thought no
one could do anything for them like Belle Merry; her mother thought she
never could spare Belle, and Charlie was never satisfied when Belle was
away. She forgot, when she was dreaming, how, when her father said Granny
Burt had no one to read to her, she said "she hadn't time to read to an
old woman."

She forgot how often, when her mother had asked for some little help,
it had been given so pettishly as to make that mother's face grow sad.
She forgot how often, when Charlie had made some little request for
entertainment, she had turned away, until now he never asked Belle
for anything when Nannie was in the room. Yes, she forgot all this,
she forg