Phœbe left the chair and looked at her aunt.
"Why," she said in an amazed voice, "I wasn't being vain! I was just lookin' to see if I am funny lookin' that it made Miss Lee laugh at me. And I found out that I'm much nicer to look at with my hair open than in plaits. You say still I mustn't have curls, but can't you see how much nicer I look this way——"
"Ach," interrupted her aunt, "don't talk so dumb! I guess you ain't any funnier lookin' than other people, and if you was it wouldn't matter long as you're a good girl."
"But I wouldn't be a good girl if I looked like some people I saw a'ready. If I had such big ears and crooked nose and big mouth——"
"Phœbe, you talk vonderful! Where do you get such nonsense put in your head?"
"I just think it and then I say it. But was that bad? I didn't mean it for bad."
She looked so like a cherub of absolute innocency with her deep blue eyes opened wide in wonder, her golden hair tumbled about her face and streaming over the shoulders of her white muslin nightgown, that Aunt Maria, though she had never heard of Reynolds' cherubs, was moved by the adorable picture.
"I know, Phœbe," she said kindly, "that you want to be a good girl. But you say such funny things still that I vonder sometimes if I'm raisin' you the right way. Come, hurry, now get dressed. Your pop's goin' way over to the field near Snavely's and you want to give him good-bye before he goes to work."
"I'll hurry, Aunt Maria, honest I will," the child promised and began to dress.
A little while later when she appeared in the big kitchen her father and Aunt Maria were already eating breakfast. With her hair drawn back into one uneven braid and a rusty brown dress upon her she seemed little like the adorable figure of the looking-glass, but her father's face lighted as he looked at her.