Kilmeny of the Orchard
I have shown you something I want you to see. Never mind about your looks, Kil- meny. Beauty isn’t everything.”
“ Oh, it is a great deal,” she wrote naively. “ But you do like me, even though I am so ugly, don’t you? You like me because of my beautiful music, don’t you? ”
“ I like you very much, Kilmeny,” an- swered Eric, laughing a little; but there was in his voice a tender note of which he was unconscious. Kilmeny was aware of it, however, and she picked up her vio— lin with a pleased smile.
He left her playing there, and all the way through the dim resinous spruce wood her music followed him like an in- visible guardian spirit.
“ Kilmeny the Beautiful! ” he mur- mured, “ and yet, good heavens, the child thinks she is ugly—she with a face more lovely than ever an artist dreamed of! A girl of eighteen who has never looked in a mirror! I wonder if there is another
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