“Do you think,” inquired Lizzie with her quiet smile, the hair being now secured, “that I don’t know better?”

“ Do you know better though?” said Bella. “Do you really believe you know better? Oh, I should be so glad if you did know better, but I am so very much afraid that I must know best!”

Lizzie asked her, laughing outright, whether she ever saw her own face or heard her own voice?

“I suppose so,” returned Bella; “I look in the glass often enough, and I chatter like a magpie.”

“I have seen your face, and heard your voice, at any rate,” said Lizzie, “and they have tempted me to say to you⁠—with a certainty of not going wrong⁠—what I thought I should never say to anyone. Does that look ill?”

“No, I hope it doesn’t,” pouted Bella, stopping herself in something between a humoured laugh and a humoured sob.