his; but he could not remember the time when he had not thought her
hideous. She had a big brown mole on her chin, out of which grew a few
bristling hairs. It was an unsightly thing, no doubt, on a woman's chin;
and sometimes, when Marty was very angry, the hairs did actually seem to
bristle, as a cat's whiskers do. When Stephen could not speak plain, he
used to point his little dimpled finger at this mole and say, "Do doe
away,--doe away;" and to this day it was a torment to him. His eyes seemed
morbidly drawn toward it at times.. When he was ill, and poor Marty bent
over his bed, ministering to him as no one but a loving old nurse can, he
saw only the mole, and had to make an effort not to shrink from her.
To-night, as she lingered on the threshold, affectionately waiting to
light his path, he was thinking only of her ugliness. But when she
exclaimed, with the privileged irritability of an old servant,--

"Jest look at your feet, Steve! they're wet through, an' your coat too, a
standin' out in that drizzle. Anybody 'ud think you hadn't common sense,"
he replied with perfect good nature, and as heartily loving a tone as if
he had been feasting on her beauty, instead of writhing inwardly at her
ugliness,--

"All right, Marty,--all right. I'm not so wet as I look. I'll change my
coat, and come in to supper in one minute. Don't you fidget about me so,
good Marty." Never was Stephen heard to speak discourteously or even
ungently to a human being. It would have offended his taste. It was not a
matter of principle with him,--not at all: he hardly ever thought of
things in that light. A rude or harsh word, a loud, angry tone, jarred on
his every sense like a discord in music, or an inharmonious color; so he
never used them. But as he ran upstairs, three steps at a time, after his
kind, off-hand words to Marty, he said to himself, "Good heavens! I do
believe Marty gets uglier every day. What a picture Rembrandt would have