“Yes,” I answered, “ever since I was a boy. If you are going to be foolish,” I added, for I saw the laugh before it came, “I shan't talk to you about it.”
“I'm not—I won't, really,” she pleaded, making her face serious again. “What is she like?”
I took from my breast pocket Barbara's photograph, and handed it to her in silence.
“Is she really as beautiful as that?” she asked, gazing at it evidently fascinated.
“More so,” I assured her. “Her expression is the most beautiful part of her. Those are only her features.”
She sighed. “I wish I was beautiful.”
“You are at an awkward age,” I told her. “It is impossible to say what you are going to be like.”
“Mamma was a lovely woman, everybody says so; and Tom I call awfully handsome. Perhaps I'll be better when I'm filled out a bit more.” A small Venetian mirror hung between the two windows; she glanced up into it. “It's my nose that irritates me,” she said. She rubbed it viciously, as if she would rub it out.
“Some people admire snub noses,” I explained to her.
“No, really?”