For the child was plain. She had been a plain, featureless baby, of uncertain colour, inclining to drab--very much, indeed, what William Thomas was after her. A baby who, even when newly washed, never looked quite clean; a little girl whose pinafore never hung right, and with tow-coloured hair which no amount of hair-oil or curl-papers could make anything but lank and unornamental! A child with a heavy, dull face, and a mouth that seldom relaxed into a smile though there were people (not Mrs. Dicki’son among them, though) who did not fail to notice that the rare smile was a very sweet one, infinitely sweeter than ever was seen on the four pretty rosy faces of the other children. [Illustration: A child with a heavy, dull face.] Mrs. Dicki’son was eloquent about Ada Elizabeth’s looks and temper. "I’m sure," she cried one day to Gerty, who was pretty, and quick of wit, and knew to a hair’s-breadth how far she could go with her mother, "it’s ’ard upon me I should have such a plain-looking child as our Ada Elizabeth. It’s no use me trying to trim her hat so as to make her look a credit to us. I’m sure it’s aggravating, it is. I’ve trimmed your two hats just alike, and she looks no better in hers than she does in her old school hat, and I got two nice curly tips just alike. ’Pon my word, it’s quite thrown away on her." "And I want another feather in mine to make it perfect, Mother," murmured Gerty, with insinuating suggestiveness. Mrs. Dicki’son caught at the bait thus held out to her. "I’ve a good mind to take the tip out," she said hesitatingly. "Yes, do, Mother; our Ada Elizabeth won’t care. Will you, Ada Elizabeth?" appealingly to the child who had had the misfortune to be born plain. "No, I don’t care," returned Ada Elizabeth, whose heart was bursting, not with jealousy, but with a crushing sense of her own shortcomings. "Just like her father," remarked Mrs. Dicki’son, loosening the feather from its place with one snip of her scissors. "He never cares ’ow he looks! ’’Andsome is as ’andsome does,’ is his motto; and though he’s been a good ’usband to me, and I’d be the last to go again’ him, yet I must say I do like a bit of smartness myself. But Ada Elizabeth’s the very moral of her father--as much in her ways as she is in her looks." So gradually it got to be an established custom that Ada Elizabeth’s attire should be shorn of those little decorations with which Mrs. Dicki’son delighted to add effect to her eldest child’s prettiness; it was felt to be quite useless to spend money over curly tips and artificial roses to put above such a plain little face, or "waste" it, as her mother put it, in the not very delicate way in which she tried to excuse herself to the child when some more obvious difference than usual between her clothes and Gerty’s was contemplated.