such a name?

"My dear, beauty is only skin-deep, and common sense is worth its
weight in gold; and you are my good sensible Esther," my mother said
once, when I had hinted rather too strongly at my plainness. Dear
soul, she was anxious to appease the pangs of injured vanity, and was
full of such sweet, balmy speeches; but girls in the ugly duckling
stage are not alive to moral compliments; and, well--perhaps I hoped
my mother might find contradiction possible.

Well, I am older and wiser now, less troublesomely introspective,
and by no means so addicted to taking my internal structure to
pieces, to find out how the motives and feelings work; but all the
same, I hold strongly to diversity of gifts. I believe beauty is a
gift, one of the good things of God; a very special talent, for which
the owner must give account. But enough of this moralizing, for I
want to speak of a certain fine afternoon in the year of our Lord,
18--well, never mind the date.

It was one of our red-letter days at Redmayne House--in other words,
a whole holiday; we always had a whole holiday on Miss Majoribanks'
birthday. The French governess had made a grand toilette, and had
gone out for the day. Fraulein had retired to her own room, and was
writing a long sentimental effusion to a certain "liebe Anna," who
lived at Heidelberg. As Fraulein had taken several of us into
confidence, we had heard a great deal of this Anna von Hummel, a
little round-faced German, with flaxen plaits and china-blue eyes,
like a doll; and Jessie and I had often wondered at this strong
Teutonic attachment. Most of the girls were playing croquet--they
played croquet then--on the square lawn before the drawing-room