“That is just what they say,” replied Jane, while a flush of generous feeling spread over her forehead.
“What, who says?” inquired Mary, for her heart trembled with a dread that some allusion was threatened to her person.
After her question there was a moment’s silence. They had both arisen, and the deformed girl stood before her sister with a tremulous lip and a wavering, anxious eye.
Jane was quick-witted, and, with many faults, very kind of heart. When she saw the distress visible in her unfortunate sister’s face she formed her reply with more of tact and kind feeling than with strict regard to truth.
“Why, it is nothing,” she said; “the girls always loved you, and petted you so much when we were little children in school together that they don’t like it when you go away without seeing them. They think that you are grown proud since you have taken to reading and talking fine language. You don’t have to work like the rest of us, and they feel slighted, and think you put on airs.”
Tears stole into the eyes of the deformed girl, and a sudden light, the sunshine of an affectionate heart, broke over her face as she said:
“It is not that, my sister. I have loved them very much all these years that I have not seen them; but since that day—— Sister, you are very good; and, oh! how beautiful; but you cannot dream how a poor creature like myself feels when happy people are enjoying life together. Without sympathy, without companions, hunchbacked and crooked. Tell me, Jane, am I not hideous to look upon?”
This was the first time in her life that Mary had permitted a consciousness of her malformation to escape her in words. The question was put in a voice of mingled agony and bitterness, wrung from the very depths of her heart. She fell upon the grass as she spoke, and with her face to the ground lay grovelling at her sister’s feet, like some wounded animal; for now that the loveliness of her face was concealed her form seemed scarcely human.
All that was generous in the nature of Jane Derwent swelled in her heart as she bent over her sister. The sudden tears fell like rain, glistening in drops upon the warm damask of her cheeks and filling her voice with affectionate sobs as she strove to lift her from the ground; but Mary shrunk away with a shudder, and kneeling down Jane raised her head with gentle violence to her bosom.
“Hideous! Oh! Mary, how can you talk so? Don’t shake and tremble in this manner. You are not frightful nor homely; only think how beautiful your hair is. Edward Clark says he never saw anything so bright and silky as your curls—he said so; indeed he did, Mary; and the other day when he was reading about Eve, in the little book you love so well, he told grandmother that he fancied Eve must have had a face just like yours.”