“Looks don't amount to much,” said Maria.
“Maria Edgham, are you crazy?”
“I hope not.”
“I told sister she didn't look so pretty,” said Evelyn.
“Look so pretty? She looks like a homely old maid. Your nose looks a yard long and your chin looks peaked and your mouth looks as if you were as ugly as sin. Your forehead is too high; it always was, and you ought to thank the Lord that he gave you pretty hair, and enough of it to cover up your forehead, and now you've gone and strained it back just as tight as you can and made a knot like a tough doughnut at the back of your head. You look like a crazy thing, I can tell you that.”
Maria said nothing. She ate her breakfast, while Aunt Maria and Evelyn could not eat much and were all the time furtively watching her.
Aunt Maria took Evelyn aside before the sisters left for school, and asked her in a whisper if she thought anything was wrong with Maria, if she had noticed anything, but Evelyn said she had not. But she and Aunt Maria looked at each other with eyes of frightened surmise.
When Maria had her hat on she looked, if anything, worse.
“Good land!” said Aunt Maria, when she saw her. “Well, if you are set on making a spectacle of yourself, I suppose you are.”
After the girls had gone she went into the other side of the house and told Eunice. “There she has gone and made herself look like a perfect scarecrow,” she said. “I wonder if there is any insanity in her father's family?”