“Come, Dora! I shall never be ready, if you don’t make haste. They will be here in ten minutes, and my hair is not half so nice as it ought to be, thanks to your carelessness.”<br />“You are very good to ignore my own claims to attention so utterly. I have been helping you this half-hour and have barely time enough left to change my frock. To make my own hair presentable is impossible now.”<br />“Why, what does it matter how your hair is dressed, or what sort of a gown you put on? You may just as well spare your pains, for unfortunately nothing that you can do seems to mitigate your ugliness. I’m sure I cannot think where you get it. You are—”<br />But, somehow, I did not feel inclined to wait for the end of Belle’s encouraging lecture. Perhaps it was because I was so often treated to my beautiful elder sister’s homilies that they had lost the spark of novelty and had acquired a chestnuty flavor. Perhaps I failed to recognize any generosity in her persistent efforts to nip such latent
