“Well, ugly-face, if you are contemplating ragging my room, or sewing my pyjamas up, or trying any nonsense, you look out,” he said with the dignity of one whose voice had broken six weeks and three days.
“I’m not ugly-face!” she cried.
“Ho, aren’t you! You’re worse!” He pulled her hair again.
“Oh, I hate you, Micky.”
She ran out of the room, and upstairs in her bedroom she stared mournfully at her own image. It was true, she was an ugly-face, as Michael had said! Oh, and she wanted to be pretty, just to please other people.
Her mouth trembled, and a tear rolled down her cheek. Another and another fell, until she could not see anything, for the mirror was all misty.
“Oh, I want to be beautiful,” she sobbed. “Dear God, make me nice-looking.”
A butterfly drifted in at the open window and flew towards her as though she were a flower. Then, feeling that the gold-dust that came from the great blue sky no longer warmed the white and black bars of his sails, he flickered out again.
Little Jo brushed her eyes, and tripped down the stairs, her misery gone. She ran into the kitchen garden, down the path, past the flowering beans and the cabbages, and through the gate into the cornfield. Soon she reached the brook and flung herself down suddenly at its edge.
She watched the water rippling past, and the green water-weed waving to her. A school of roach went by, the light showing their bright red fins. Little Jo wondered if the fishes knew that they had lovely red fins, and if it was nice to stir the water with them. Behind her the corn seemed to sigh as the wind swept over, as though it knew of coming midsummer, with its hum over the fields, for that meant that August would follow, and the reapers come with the horses and machines.