, to herself; "She's got bigger feet than I have. She's
got nearly twice as big feet, she has."

John Logan looks at the girl with a profound tenderness, as she stands
there, pouting and swinging her foot. He attempts to approach her, but
she still holds her brow bowed to the tree upon her arm, and seems not
to see him. He shoulders his gun and walks past her, and says, kindly,

"Good-bye, Carrie."

But the girl's eyes are following him, although she would not be willing
to admit it, even to herself. As he is about to disappear, she thrusts
her hand madly through her hair, and pulls it down all in a heap. Still
looking at him under her brows, still swinging her foot wildly, she
says:

"Do you think red hair is so awful ugly?"

And what a wondrous glory of hair it was! It was so intensely black; and
then it had that singular fringe of fire, or touch of Titian color,
which seen in the sunset made it almost red.

The man stops, turns, comes back a step or two, as she continues:

"I do--I do! Oh, I wish to Moses I had tow hair, I do, like Sylvia
Fields."

The man is standing close beside her now. He is looking down into her
face and she feels his presence. The foot does not swing so violently
now, and the girl has cautiously, and, as she believes, unseen, lifted
the edge of her tattered sleeve to her eyes. "Why Carrie, your hair is
not red." And he speaks very tenderly. "Carrie, you are going to be
beautiful. You are beautiful now. You are very beautiful!"

Carrie is not so angry now. The foot stops altogether, and she lifts her
face and says:

"No I ain't--I ain't beautiful! Don't you try to humbug me. I am ugly,
and I know it! For, last winter, when I went down to the grocery to
fetch Forty-nine--he'd gone down there to get medicine for his ager, Mr.
John Logan--I heard a man say, 'She is ugly as a mud fence.' Oh, I went
for him! I made the fur fly! But that didn't make me pretty. I was ugly
all the same. No, I'm not pretty--I'm ugly, and I know it!"

"Oh, no, you're not. You are beautiful, and getting lovelier every day."
Carrie softens and approaches him.

"Am I, John Logan? And you really don't think red hair is the ugliest
thing in the world?"

"Do I really not think red hair is the ugliest thing in the world? Why,
Carrie?"

Carrie, starting back, looks in his face and says, bitterly: "You do.
You do think red hair is the ugliest thing in all this born world, and I
just dare you to deny it. Sylvia Fi