"Your aunt Maria looked very much as you do when she was your age," her mother went on, with the calm cruelty of an inquisitor. Maria looked at her, her mouth was quivering. "Did I look like Mrs. Jasper Cone's baby that died last week when I was a baby?" said she. "Who said you did?" inquired her mother, unguardedly. "She did. She came up behind me with Mrs. Elliot when I was waiting for father to get the peaches, and she said her baby that died looked just like me; she had always thought so." "That Cone baby look like you!" repeated Maria's mother. "Well, one's own always looks different to them, I suppose." "Then you don't think it did?" said Maria. Tears actually stood in her beautiful blue eyes. "No, I don't," replied her mother, abruptly. "Nobody in their sober senses could think so. I am sorry poor Mrs. Cone lost her baby. I know how I felt when my first baby died, but as for saying it looked like you--" "Then you don't think it did, mother?" "It was one of the homliest babies I ever laid my eyes on, poor little thing, if it did die," said Maria's mother, emphatically. She was completely disarmed by this time. But when she saw Maria glance again at the glass she laid hold of her moral weapons, the wielding of which she believed to be for the best spiritual good of her child. "Your aunt Maria was very much better looking than you at her age," she repeated, firmly. Then, at the sight of the renewed quiver around the sensitive little mouth her heart melted. "Get out of your clothes and into your night-gown, and get to bed, child," said she. "You look well enough. If you only behave as well as you look, that is all that is necessary." Chapter III Maria fell asleep that night with the full assurance that she had not been mistaken concerning the beauty of the little face which she had seen in the looking-glass. All that troubled her was the consideration that her aunt Maria, whose homely face seemed to glare out of the darkness at her, might have looked just as she did when she was her age. She hoped, and then she hoped that the hope was not wicked, that she might die young rather than live to look like her aunt Maria. She pictured with a sort of pleasurable horror, what a lovely little waxen-image she would look now, laid away in a nest of white flowers. She had only just begun to doze, when she awoke with a great start. Her father had opened her door, and stood calling her. "Maria," he said, in an agitated voice. Maria sat up in bed. "Oh, father, what is it?" said she, and a vague horror chilled her. "Get up, and slip on something, and go into your mother's room," said her father, in a gasping sort of voice. "I've got to go for the doctor." Maria put one slim little foot out of bed. "Oh, father," she said, "is mother sick?"