“Your father’s figure, my dear,” said Lady Elizabeth, “was beautiful with the grace and power which comes of training.  He was a military man, and you have only to look at a dozen common men in a marching regiment and compare them with a dozen of the same class of men who go on plodding to work and loafing at play in their native villages, to see what people can do for their own figures.  His eyes, Selina, were bright with intelligence and trained powers of observation; and they were beautiful with kindliness, and with the well-bred habit of giving complete attention to other people and their affairs when he talked with them.  He had a rare smile, which you may not inherit, but the real beauty of such mouths as his comes from the lips being restrained into firm and sensitive lines, through years of self-control and fine sympathies.”

I do not quite understand.  “Do you mean that I can practise my mouth into a nice shape?” I asked.

“Certainly not, my dear, any more than you can pinch your nose into shape with your finger and thumb; but your lips, and all the lines of your face, will take shape of themselves, according to your temper and habits.

“There are two things,” my godmother continued, after turning round to look at me for a minute, “there are two things, Selina, against your growing up good-looking.  One is that you have caught so many little vulgarisms from the servants; and the other is your little bad habit of grumbling, which, for that matter, is a very ill-bred habit as well, and would spoil the prettiest eyes, nose, mouth, and chin that ever were inherited.  Under-bred and ill-educated women are, as a general rule, much less good-looking than well-bred and highly-educated ones, especially in middle life; not because good features and pretty complexions belong to one class more than to another, but because nicer personal habits and stricter discipline of the mind do.  A girl who was never taught to brush her teeth, to breathe through the nostrils instead of the lips, and to chew with the back teeth instead of the front, has a very poor chance of growing up with a pretty mouth, as anyone may see who has observed a middle-aged woman of that class munching a meat pie at a railway-station.  And if, into the bargain, she has nothing to talk about but her own and her neighbour’s everyday affairs, and nothing to think about to keep her from continually talking, life, my dear child, is so full of little rubs, that constant chatter of this kind must almost certainly be constant grumbling.  And constant grumbling, Selina, makes an ugly under-lip, a forehead wrinkled with frowning, and dull eyes that see nothing but grievances.  There is a book in the library with some pictures of faces that I must show you.  Do you draw at all, my dear?”

“Mamma gave me a drawing-slate on my birthday,” I replied, “but Joseph bothered me to lend it to him, and now he’s broken the glass.  It is so tiresome!  But it’s always the way if you lend things.”