I CAN see her now as she looked to me that winter morning wrapped in furs, ready all but her fur cap to brave the frosty air, when she held up in triumph a spray of brilliant bloom, and said: “Look, Aunt Myra, did you ever see anything prettier than that from a conservatory? And they blossomed in my window-seat!” I was not her auntie, but was so old and intimate a friend of the family that the children had adopted me.

“Hasn’t Ethel a beautiful face?” I said to Miss Margaret, another friend of the family, who, with myself, was a guest at the Carlisles’. “It is so very bright. Did you notice what a peculiar brightness there is to her eyes when she smiles? And she has a lovely smile.”

Miss Margaret looked grave, almost troubled. “It is a sweeter face than it will be in a few years, I am afraid,” she said, shaking her head, which already had threads of silver in it. Miss Margaret was a wise sweet woman, not given to croaking, so I waited somewhat anxiously to hear her words. “Ethel is cultivating habits which will spoil her face,” she said; “I have not been here before for two years, and I notice a very decided change in it since then. She was one of the sweetest little children I ever knew, but if you watch through only one day you will discover what I mean. Unless something occurs to change her habits, there will be another spoiled face in the world in a few years.”

I had been in the house but a day, and had been absent from the country for more than two years, so I knew very little of the younger Carlisles. Ethel had always been my favorite, and it made me sad and a trifle annoyed to hear Miss Margaret’s words. I felt sure she must have grown over particular.

Of course, with such a warning, it would have been impossible not to have watched. Long before night I knew what Miss Margaret meant.

“Where in the world is my French Grammar?” I heard Ethel’s voice, with a very sharp note in it, rasping through the hall. “I left it on the dining-room table while I ran out to speak to Nellie, and somebody has taken it. I declare, I cannot lay down a thing for a second and find it again. I do wish Ann could be taught to let my books alone!”

“Indeed, Miss Ethel, I have not touched a book this morning; I have not dusted in the dining-room yet.” This was Ann’s voice; then Ethel’s, by no means sweetened: “That is perfect nonsense, Ann; I left it here not two minutes ago, and now it is gone. What do you think could have become of it? It couldn’t walk off without hands.”

“Ethel!” from Mrs. Carlisle, in a reproving tone, “do not speak so to Ann, daughter; she has not been in the dining-room since breakfast.”

“Well, but, mother, my French Grammar is gone that I just laid there, and the bell is ringing; I shall be late, and I think it is just too bad!” There was an ugly frown all over the fair forehead, and a sharp and at the same time whining tone to the voice which had been so sweet but a little while before.

“Ethel,” called her older sister Nannie from the hall above, “here is your book; you left it on the hat rack a few minutes ago.”

Away went Ethel without a word of explanation to mother or to Ann, and we heard her voice, still sharp, saying to Nannie, “Why couldn’t you have told me before, and not kept me hunting half the morning?”

I heard the mother sigh, and was sorry for her, and glad that the alcove curtains shaded me from view, and that I had a book in my hand and could appear not to have heard.

Ethel came home at lunch time, and was out of sorts with the soup because it tasted of onions, and with the squash because it had been peppered. She said she wished anybody ever consulted her tastes, and she would just as soon think of puffing tobacco smoke in the face of people as of eating onions for them to smell afterwards. She scolded her brother Tom for forgetting the music he was to call for; and when he said he was very sorry, and it was because he had so many important errands for his father that he forgot it, she tossed her head and said sharply, “Oh! you needn’t explain; of course you would forget what I wanted; I’m of no consequence.”

In short, with my eyes opened as they had been by Miss Margaret I could not help seeing that Ethel spoiled the sweetness of almost every room she entered that day, and complained of unkindness or of discomforts at every turn. Yet at family worship, when she played,

“Sun of my soul, thou Saviour dear,”

and led the singing with a very sweet voice, she looked like an angel. It broke my heart to hear her, not ten minutes afterwards, scolding Baby Frank for overturning her spool basket. “You are just a little nuisance!” she said, sharp-voiced again; “I think mamma ought to whip you. Well, mamma, I do,” in response to a reproving look from her mother; “you are just spoiling him, I think.”

“Is it possible that this is a fair specimen of that child’s days?” I asked Miss Margaret, as we went down the hall together.

“I am afraid it is,” said Miss Margaret. “She is learning to frown and fret over the veriest trifles, and to answer even her mother rudely, as you noticed just now. How many years of such living will it take to utterly spoil the pretty face? Isn’t it strange that a young girl who believes herself such an ardent admirer of beauty, should deliberately undertake to spoil the lovely work of art which God gave her to take care of?”

Myra Spafford.