“Ah!” cried poor Honor. “This hideous disfigurement! Shall I ever outgrow it, I wonder? Maman said I should, but I know not!”
Stephanie thought the freckles quite as dreadful as Honor did, and looked her sympathy.
“_Tiens!_” she said. “We have the appearance that the good God gives us.”
Here she glanced at her own reflection, with complacent approval of her brown velvet eyes and black satin hair.
“My poor Honor! But your hair is always beautiful, and there are no eyelashes like yours in Vevay. Take courage! In the story your hair is dark, is it not? The story marches always? When shall I hear another chapter?”
Honor’s face brightened. The story was always a comfort when the freckles became too afflicting. It was to be a romance, in three volumes: the story of her life, beginning when she was sixteen. (She was now twelve!) It opened thus:
“I was young; they called me fair. My mirror revealed masses of jet-black hair which rippled smoothly to the floor and lay in silken piles on the velvet carpet. My eyes--there was one who called them starry pools of night. My cheek was a white rose.”
Stephanie thought this a wonderful description. Honor, as I say, always found comfort in it, and forgot the freckles while she was following the fortunes of her dark-eyed counterpart.
“To-morrow, perhaps! Now--Stephanie, thou must help me in a sorrowful task. It is to put away--”
“Thy colored dresses, _chérie_? But surely! but thou wilt wear white, Honor? It is everywhere admitted as mourning, thou knowest!”
“Fiordispina and Angélique!” Honor spoke with sorrowful dignity and resolve. “Yes, Stephanie, it must be so! While my parents lived, do you see, I was a child; now--” An eloquent shrug and wave completed the sentence. “I am resolved!” she said. “These dear ones, with whom my happy childhood has been passed, must retire to--finally, to the shades of memory, Stephanie!”
“How noble!” murmured Stephanie. “Thou art heroic, Honor!”
Shaking her head sadly, Honor opened a cupboard door, and with careful hands drew out--certainly, two of the most beautiful dolls that ever were seen. Maman had chosen them with her own exquisite taste, in Paris and Rome. Angélique, the Parisian maiden, was blonde as Patricia herself, with flaxen hair and eyes of real sky-blue; Fiordispina, on the other hand, might almost stand for Honor’s dream-self. Her hair did not reach the ground, much less lie in silken piles on the velvet carpet, but it was long enough to braid, and it was real hair: moreover it was hair with a story to it. Maman had bought it in Rome, from a woman whose daughter had just entered a convent, and had her beautiful hair cut off. The woman wept, and assured Mrs. Bright that there was no such hair in Rome. Most of it had been purchased by two noble Princesses whom age had deprived of their own _chevelure_; there was but this little tress left. She had thought to preserve it as a memento of her child, but for the _puppazza_ of so charming a _donzella_ as the--finally--she named a price, and Fiordispina received her head of hair, in place of the bit of fuzzy lamb’s wool which had disfigured her pretty head.