"I wish there were a way and I knew it," she responded with a smile. "But
you should say 'isn't,' you know."

"Oh, but you are pretty," I cried, not with the intent of compliment, but
as merely stating a fact.

I do not now think that it was a fact. Miss Coleman's features were
irregular, her nose prominent, her forehead too high; but she had a fair,
pure complexion and fine eyes, and somehow reminded me of the calla lilly
that Ma was always fussing about in our sitting room.

And she was good and wise. I have often thought how different my life
might have been if her orbit had not briefly threaded mine. If I had asked
that question of some simpering girl a few years older than I--the average
Sunday school teacher--she would have replied, from under the flower-
burdened hat that had cost her so much thought, that all flesh was grass
and beauty vain; and I should have known that she didn't believe it.

"For that matter," said Miss Coleman, after a little pause in which she
seemed considering her words with more than usual care, "there are ways of
growing beautiful; and, so far as she can, it is a woman's duty to seek
them; would you like to know how?"

A duty to be beautiful! Here was novel doctrine.

I gazed with eyes and mouth wide open as she continued: "For one with good
lungs and a sound body, the first law of beauty is to be healthy; and
health is not just luck. To get it and keep it seek constant exercise in
the open air. Middle-aged women lose their looks because they stay in too
constantly; when they were girls and played out-of-doors they had roses in