"Beautiful?" said Jock, drawing a long breath. "But beautiful's not a thing you can go in for, like an exam: You're born so, or you're born not so; and you know you're not--I mean, you know you're---- Well, it isn't your fault. Are you going to be sent away for just being--not pretty?"
"I told you," said the girl, with a little impatience. "Being pretty is of no consequence. I am pretty, of course," she added regretfully. "But it is only if I turn out beautiful that she will take the trouble. And at sixteen, I am told, one cannot yet know."
"But--" cried Jock with a sort of consternation, "you don't mind, do you? I don't mean anything unkind, you know; I don't think it matters--and I am sure it isn't your fault; you are not even--good-looking," candour compelled the boy to say, as to an honest comrade with whom sincerity was best.
"Ah!" cried Bice, with a little excitement. "Do you think so? Then perhaps there is more hope."
Jock was confounded by this utterance, and he began to feel that he had been uncivil. "I don't mean," he said, "that you are not--I mean that it is not of the least consequence. What does it matter? I am sure you are clever, which is far better. I think you could get up anything faster than most fellows if you were to try."
"Get up! What does that mean? And when I tell you that it does matter to me--oh much,--very much!" she cried. "When you are beautiful, everything is before you--you marry, you have whatever you wish, you become a great lady; only to be pretty--that does nothing for you. Ugly, however," said the girl reflectively; "if I am ugly, then there is some hope."
"I did not say that," cried Jock, shocked at the suggestion. "I wouldn't be so uncivil. You are--just like other people," he added encouragingly, "not much either one way or another--like the rest of us," Jock said, with the intention of soothing her ruffled feelings. At sixteen decorum is not always the first thing we think of; and though Bice was not an English girl, she was very young. She threw out a vigorous arm and pushed him from her, so that the astonished critic, stumbling over some fallen branches, measured his length upon the dewy sod.
"That was not I," she said demurely, as he picked himself up in great surprise--drawing a step away, and looking at him with wide-open eyes, to which the little fright of seeing him fall, and the spark of malice that took pleasure in it, had given sudden brilliancy. Jock was so much astonished that he uttered no reproach, but went on by her side, after a moment, pondering. He could not see how any offence could have lurked in the encouraging and consolatory words he had said.