her velvet forehead, like some shadowed halo. All this came much more
slowly and spasmodically than one tells it. Few noticed the change much;
none noticed all; and yet there came a night--a student's social--when
with a certain suddenness the whole school, teachers and pupils,
realized the newness of the girl, and even Bles was startled.

He had bought her in town, at Christmas time, a pair of white satin
slippers, partly to test the smallness of her feet on which in younger
days he had rallied her, and partly because she had mentioned a possible
white dress. They were a cheap, plain pair but dainty, and they fitted
well.

When the evening came and the students were marching and the teachers,
save Miss Smith, were sitting rather primly apart and commenting, she
entered the room. She was a little late, and a hush greeted her. One
boy, with the inimitable drawl of the race, pushed back his ice-cream
and addressed it with a mournful head-shake:

"Go way, honey, yo' los' yo' tas'e!"

The dress was plain and fitted every curving of a healthy girlish form.
She paused a moment white-bodied and white-limbed but dark and
velvet-armed, her full neck and oval head rising rich and almost black
above, with its deep-lighted eyes and crown of silent darkling hair.

To some, such a revelation of grace and womanliness in this hoyden, the
gentle swelling of lankness to beauty, of lowliness to shy self-poise,
was a sudden joy, to others a mere blindness. Mary Taylor was perplexed
and in some indefinite way amazed; and many of the other teachers saw no
beauty, only a strangeness that brought a smile. They were such as know