"Well?" said Elizabeth, as her cousin paused.
"She is all life and vivacity. I thought you said she was 'dummified.'"
"But she was. I never saw her like this before."
"Then something woke her. If any seemed ill at ease or lonely, she went to them, and, behold, they chatted like magpies! I saw some of her schoolmates look at her wonderingly, and at least one sneered, but I watched. She had just one thought, and that was to make every one happy. You could have spared any one of the girls better; in fact, any three of them."
Long after Helen had gone to sleep, Elizabeth lay thinking. "Jimmy Flanders," she said, and counted off one finger; another followed, and then another. After all, it was wonderful how many good deeds she could reckon up, and all so quietly done. Strange she had never thought of them en masse before. How could Bernice be gay among so many frowns and slights?
The next forenoon session of the grammar-school was well under way. Bernice opened her history, and in it was a little slip of paper that she had used as a book-mark since that first morning. An odd spirit seized her, and almost before she knew it, she had gone up the aisle, and laid it on Elizabeth's desk. The next instant she would have given much to withdraw it. Elizabeth glanced down and flushed painfully. There it was: "She's so plain. She's Rocky Mountainy—all ridges and hubbles." But Bernice was back at her work again, evidently unruffled.
When the bell tapped for intermission, Elizabeth went to her. "Bernice, I did write it. O, I am so ashamed!" and, bursting into tears, she hid her face on Bernice's shoulder.
One of those smiles that somehow have the power of transforming the harshest features, swept over the girl's face, and, picking up Elizabeth's hand, she kissed it softly again and again. "I won't kiss her face," she thought, "I am so homely!" but from that day she slipped into the queenly place she had a right to occupy, and it was not long before every one forgot her plainness.
And let me whisper you a secret, girls,—for even now Bernice does not seem to know,—as she grew older, the rough lines mellowed and softened, the short figure stretched upward, till she was beautiful as ever her dearest wish had pictured. Was it not lovely spirit within, for Bernice was a Christian, molding and modeling the clay into a fit dwelling-place for itself? That is a beauty that never quite withers away. Its roots are planted in the soul beautiful, and a beautiful soul can never die.