God to call her, and conceived that complaint would be a form of blasphemy.  Now as she wielded her broom, her angular shoulders ached with rheumatism, and, in a voice as creaking as her joints, she sang, “For the Master said there is work to do!” Such was Aunt Hannah’s creed, and it pleased her while she moiled over the work to announce in song that she acted upon divine command.  To Aunt Hannah’s mind, this lent an august dignity to a dust-rag.

When Mary savagely threw down her dish-towel and burst unaccountably into tears, both women looked up, startled.  Mary was normally a sunny child and one not given to weeping.

“For the name of goodness!” exclaimed the mother in bewilderment.  “What in the world can have struck the child?” It was to Aunt Hannah that she put the question, but it was Mary who answered, and answered with a sudden flow of vehemence: 

“Why didn’t God make me pretty?” demanded the girl in an impassioned voice.  “They call me spindle-legs at school, and yesterday Jimmy Marquess said,

    ’If I had a sister Mary that had eyes like that,
    I’d put her out of pain with a baseball bat.’

“It ain’t fair that I’ve got to be ugly.”

Mrs. Burton, confronted with a situation she had not anticipated, found herself unequipped with a reply, but Aunt Hannah’s face became severe.

“You are as God made you, child,” she announced in a tone of finality, “and it’s sinful to be dissatisfied.”

But, if dissatisfaction was wicked, Mary was resolved upon sin.  For the first time in her eleven years of life she stood forth mutinous.  Her eyes blazed, and she trembled passionately through her slender child-body, with her hands clenched into tight little fists.

“If God made me this way on purpose, He didn’t treat me fair,” she rebelliously flamed out.  “What good can it do God to have me skinny and white, with eyes that don’t even match?”

Aunt Hannah’s face paled as though she feared that she must fall an innocent victim to the avenging bolt which might momentarily be expected to crash through the roof.

“Elizabeth,” she gasped, “stop the child!  Don’t let her invite the wrath of the Almighty like that!  Tell her how wicked it is to complain an’ rebel against Infinite Wisdom.”

They heard a low, rather contemptuous laugh, and saw Ham standing in the door.  His coarse lumberman’s socks were pulled up over his trousers’ legs and splashed with mud of the stable lot.

“Aunt Hannah, what gave you the notion that there’s anything wrong about complainin’?” he demanded shortly, and Mary knew that she had acquired a champion.

“Complainin’ against God’s will is a sin.  Every person knows that.”  Aunt Hannah spoke with the aggrieved uncertainty of one unexpectedly called upon to defend an axiom.  “An’ for a girl to fret about her looks is worldly.”