She delayed in her room as long as she dared, but her mother had always insisted on perfect regularity at meal times, and Polly knew that she must appear. With one last, despairing glance at the mirror, a glance which was by no means reassuring, she turned away and silently went down the stairs and into the dining-room, hoping to take her place at the table so quietly that she could escape notice. It was not her mother whom she dreaded, but she shrank from her father's teasing and Aunt Jane's merciless comments. As she drew her chair up to the table, Aunt Jane glanced up from her oatmeal. "Late again, Polly! Why, what have you been putting on your face, child?" Polly's cheeks grew scarlet, but she answered, with an attempt at carelessness,-- "Oh, nothing but a little buttermilk. Why?" "Why?" responded Aunt Jane, with needless emphasis, "I should think you'd better ask why! Have you looked in the glass this morning?" "Yes," answered Polly faintly, for they were all staring at her, and she saw a mischievous twinkle come into her father's blue eyes. "Well, I'd like to know what fresh piece of nonsense this is," Aunt Jane was beginning severely, when the doctor interposed,-- "Wait a minute, Jane; don't be in such a hurry to scold. Come, Polly, tell us what you have been doing to make yourself look like a South Sea Islander or a Pawnee?" Polly dropped her eyes and played with her fork for a minute; but sulkiness was not in her nature, and after a pause, she confessed. "Molly said buttermilk was good for freckles, so I put some on mine, but they didn't come off. You see," she added, turning to her mother with the certainty that she would find sympathy in that quarter, if in no other, "the Shepard girls are coming to-day, and Molly wanted me to go over to see them right away, and I wanted to look as well as I can." Polly was interrupted by a hearty laugh from the doctor, who laid down his knife and fork and leaned back in his chair, to enjoy his merriment to the utmost. "I think there's no doubt of their being struck by your looks, Polly," he said at length. Then, as he saw her bite her lips to steady them, he added kindly, "Shall I tell my little girl what I really think about it? I don't consider the freckles themselves beautiful; but I would rather see her with enough of them to prove that she lives out of doors in the sunshine, as every healthy child should, than be one of the little, pale-faced beauties brought up in the house, or under veils and broad hats. If I can't have but one, I want my Polly to have health rather than beauty, for health is beauty, especially in children." "Better have a freckled face than a freckled soul," added Aunt Jane, feeling that here was the opportunity to make a fine moral point.