“Leetle boys are not beautiful. It is enough when they are good.”
“My mother is beautiful. Mr Carr says I am like my mother.”
“Ugly people can be like beautiful people. How can a dirty little boy be like a belle grande dame? Regard thy hands! Four times already have they been scrubbed.”
“My hands can be clean when I like. I was talking of if I was beautiful.”
“Silence, miserable one! The appearance is of no account,” pronounced Marie boldly. “To be good is better than beauty.”
Geoffrey drew his brows together in a frown. He was displeased, and when he was displeased he made himself felt.
“I should fink, Marie,” he said deliberately, “that you must be the goodest person in all the world.”
The inference was plain, so plain that sensitive little Jack coloured up to the roots of his hair. Jack was the sweetest and most lovable of children—a flaxen-haired cherub, whose winning face and gentle ways made him universally beloved. Among the children of the second generation he stood out pre-eminently, and every one of his aunts and uncles enshrined him in a special niche of affection. Pixie had known many searchings of heart because of her own partiality, but was fain to console herself by the thought that Jack was even more like the beloved Bridgie than Bridgie’s own sturdy, commonplace son.
As for Jack, he loved everybody, Marie among the number, and, feeling her depreciated, rushed stutteringly to the rescue.
“Oh, Geoff!” he cried eagerly. “You souldn’t! You souldn’t, Geoff! I know somefing that’s uglier than Marie—”