While she paid the clerk for the photographs and made her arrangements with him as to the desired size and style, Marjorie busied herself with looking around and scanning the different faces she saw.

“There!” she thought; “what for, do you s’pose, have I got to wait for that baby to have its picture taken?  Nothing but an ugly mite of a thing, anyway!  I should n’t guess it was more than a day old, from the way it wiggles its eyes about.  I wonder if its mother thinks it’s a nice baby?  Anyhow, I should think I might have my picture taken first.  And that hump-backed boy!  Guess I have a right to go in before him!  He ’s not pretty one bit.  What a lovely frock that young lady has on,—­all fluffy and white, with lace and things!  She keeps looking in the glass all the time, so I guess she knows she ’s pretty.  When I am a young lady I ’ll be prettier than she is, though, for my hair is goldener than hers, and my eyes are brown, and hers are nothing, but plain blue.  I heard a gentleman say the other day I had ’a rare style of beauty,’ he did n’t know I heard (he was talking to Mamma, and he thought I had gone away, but I had n’t).  I ’m glad I have ’a rare style of beauty,’ and I ’m glad my father ’s rich, so I can have lovely clothes and—­ Seems to me any one ought to see that I ’m prettier than that old lady over there; she ’s all bent over and wrinkled, and when she talks her voice is all kind of trembly, and her eyes are as dim—­ But she ’ll go in before me just the same, and I ’ll get tireder and tireder, until I—­ Mamma, won’t you come over to that sofa, and put your arm around me so I can rest?  I ’m as sleepy as I can be; and by the time all these folks get done being taken, I ’ll be dead, I s’pose. Do come!”

Her mother permitted herself to be led to the opposite side of the room, where a large lounge stood, and seating herself upon it, took her little daughter within the circle of her arm; whereupon Marjorie commenced complaining of the injustice of these “homely” people being given the advantage over her pretty self.

“Oh, Marjorie, Marjorie!” whispered her mother, “what a very foolish little girl you are!  I think it would take a miracle to make you see aright.  Don’t you know that that dear baby is very, very sick, and that probably its sad little mother has brought it here to have its picture taken, so that if it should be called away from her, she might have something to gaze at that looked like her precious little one?  And that poor crippled boy!  He has a lovely face, with its large, patient eyes and sensitive mouth.  How much better he is to look at than that young woman you admire so much, whose beauty does not come from her soul at all, and will disappear as soon as her rosy cheeks fade and her hair grows gray!  Now, that sweet old lady over there is just a picture of goodness; and her dear old eyes have a look of love in them that is more beautiful than any shimmer or shine you could show me in those of your friend Miss Peacock.”