The personal appearance of Miss Wigger might have suggested a
modest distrust of his own abilities to Lavater, when that
self-sufficient man wrote his famous work on Physiognomy.
Whatever betrayal of her inner self her face might have
presented, in the distant time when she was young, was now
completely overlaid by a surface of a flabby fat which, assisted
by green spectacles, kept the virtues (or vices) of this woman's
nature a profound secret until she opened her lips. When she used
her voice, she let out the truth. Nobody could hear her speak,
and doubt for a moment that she was an inveterately ill-natured
woman.

"Make your curtsey, child!" said Miss Wigger. Nature had so toned
her voice as to make it worthy of the terrors of her face. But
for her petticoats, it would have been certainly taken for the
voice of a man.

The child obeyed, trembling.

"You are to go away with me," the school-mistress proceeded, "and
to be taught to make yourself useful under my roof."

Syd seemed to be incapable of understanding the fate that was in
store for her. She sheltered herself behind her merciless mother.
"I'm going away with you, mamma," she said--"with you and Rick."

Her mother took her by the shoulders, and pushed her across the
room to her aunt.

The child looked at the formidable female creature with the man's