"I wouldn't mind the—the hair!" he stammered. "I've got a cousin up to Boston, and she's a great belle—a beauty, you know. All the artists are crazy to paint her picture, and her hair is just the color of yours."
Lilly laid the flowers down. Her eyes fell.
"You don't understand," she said, slowly. "Other girls have red hair. It isn't that."
Roger's eyes faltered in their reassuring gaze.
"I—I wouldn't mind—the other thing, either, if I were you," he stammered.
"You don't know what you'd do if you were me!" the girl cried, passionately. "You don't know what you'd do if you were hated, and despised, and laughed at, every day of your life! And how would you like the feeling that it could never be any different, no matter where you went, or how hard you tried to be good, or how much you learned? Never, never any different! Ah, it makes me hate myself, and everybody! I could tear them to pieces, like this, and this!"
She had risen, and was tearing the scarlet petals of the lilies into pieces, her teeth set, her eyes flashing.
"Look at them!" she cried wildly. "How like me they are, all red blood like yours, except those few black drops which never can be washed out! Never! Never!"
And again the child threw herself upon the ground, face downward, and broke into wild, convulsive sobbing.
Young Roger was in an agony of pity. He found his position as consoler a trying one. An older person might well have quailed before this outburst of unchild-like passion. He knew that what she said was true—terribly, bitterly true, and this kept him dumb. He only stood and looked down upon the quivering little figure in embarrassed silence.