We had a beautiful time. Of course I had brought my baby, and I secretly thought it was a great deal cunninger and prettier than Elizabeth’s, that she had had ever since her last birthday, and that really looked quite old and common to me now, though she had kept it so nice, and I had admired it so.
Father and Andrew came to dinner; and after dinner we had forfeits, and Hunt the Ring, and Magical Music, and Still Palm. There were three other children who came to spend the afternoon.
I was very happy. There was a hidden corner in my heart that kept warming up every now and then, as if mother and I had a secret together, and we were whispering it to each other across the wide, cold city. Elizabeth’s pretty hair and long blue ribbons flew this way and that in the merry play and running; and I noticed them just as I always had, and I knew that there was nothing pretty about my short, plain, light-colored hair, and I did think that flying ends would have been a comfort if I could have had them in the first place; but there was something beyond comfort in the loyalty of wearing that butterfly bow which nobody need touch or try to change for me, since—because she thought it best for me to wear it so—my mother had put it on!
I HAD BROUGHT MY BABY.
I ran straight up to her dressing-room the minute we got home. She sat there in her white flannel wrapper before the fire. I threw my arms around her and laid my head down on her lap.
“Now untie the little bow,” I said: and she asked: “Did my little girl wear it all the day for my sake?”
She understood. We had been whispering to each other’s thought across all the cold, wide city.
“Mother,” I asked her, after I said my prayers, and before I said goodnight, “why did I have such a Rocky-Mountain kind of a face? Why couldn’t God have given me a pretty, flat face? Can you tell?”
“God didn’t see best to make you handsome, dear; but He will make you beautiful, if you will let Him, his own way. And I don’t think,” she added, more lightly, and laughing a sweet laugh, “that my Emmie’s face could be a flat one! It wouldn’t suit her at all; and I love this a great deal better!”