Deborah became madly jealous.
“I hate her, I hate her, and I hate him too,” she said. “What does she want, meddling with him? He will come to like her best.”
And then she went home and looked in the glass. Yes, there was another of those ugly disfigurements puffing up the whole of one cheek.
“Why is she so pretty and I so plain?” she thought. “If I were as pretty as she is I—I—I what? I nothing.”
A prize distribution took place in the town some six weeks or so after. Now, though by this time it was the middle of summer, the wind and the rain on that particular day were extreme, and so Deborah found as she took some dozen girls down to receive prizes. It was a long walk, and by the time they got there none of them looked very presentable.
She never forgot that day, for had the Fates conspired they could not have made her appear more disreputable. Her hair was dishevelled and her fringe out of curl, and her hat, which had blown off in the journey down, kept lurching constantly to one side.
But the first person she set eyes on when she came to the journey’s end was the young man. For the time being she forgot her appearance in the delight of seeing him.
They sat together during the ceremony, and afterwards walked home together, and still she forgot to think of her untidy state.
But when she was inside the house she went upstairs.
The first thing a young woman does, as a rule, when she has just seen the young man she likes, is to look at herself in the glass. That is if she is natural, but of course, as we all know, there are a great many very unnatural women in the world. Deborah, however, belonged to the unnatural sort, evidently; she deliberately refrained from going near the glass, though it was there waiting for her.