ut _my_ slaving to damp-plait your
hair every night."

I repeated nurse's speech pretty volubly, and with her sharp accent
and accompanying toss. My godmother heard me out, and then she said--

"Nurse quoted a very good proverb, which is even truer than it is
allowed to be. Those who do well grow to look well. My little
goddaughter, that soft child's face of yours can be pinched and pulled
into a nice shape or an ugly shape, very much as you pull and pinch
that gutta-percha head I gave you, and, one way or another, it is
being shaped all along."

"But people can't give themselves beautiful figures, and eyes, and
mouths, and hands, as you said papa had, unless they are born so," I
objected.

"Your father's figure, my dear," said Lady Elizabeth, "was beautiful
with the grace and power which comes of training. He was a military
man, and you have only to look at a dozen common men in a marching
regiment and compare them with a dozen of the same class of men who go
on plodding to work and loafing at play in their native villages, to
see what people can do for their own figures. His eyes, Selina, were
bright with intelligence and trained powers of observation; and they
were beautiful with kindliness, and with the well-bred habit of giving
complete attention to other people and their affairs when he talked
with them. He had a rare smile, which you may not inherit, but the
real beauty of such mouths as his comes from the lips being restrained
into firm and sensitive lines, through years of self-control and fine
sympathies."

I do not quite understand. "Do you mean that I can practise my mouth
into a nice shape?" I asked.

"Certainly not, my dear, any more than you can pinch your nose into
shape with your finger and thumb; but your lips, and all the lines of
your face, will take shape of themselves, according to your temper and
habits.

"There are two things," my godmother continued, after turning round to
look at me for a minute, "there are two things, Selina, against your
growing up good-looking. One is that you have caught so many little
vulgarisms from the servants; and the other is your little bad habit
of grumbling, which, for that matter, is a very ill-bred habit as
well, and would spoil the prettiest eyes, nose, mouth, and chin that
ever were inherited. Under-bred and ill-educated women are, as a
general rule, much less good-looking than well-bred and
highly-educated ones, especially in middle life; not because