As she lifted the pitcher from the wash-stand, she happened to glance at the proverb calendar hanging over the towel-rack, and saw the verse for the day.

It was "Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." The big red letters stood out accusingly.
"Oh dear," she thought, as she plunged her burning face into the bowl of cold water, "if I hadn't had so much miserable pride, I wouldn't have destroyed what little complexion I had left.

Like as not the skin will all peel off now, and I'll look like a half-scaled fish for weeks." She was so irritable later, when Joyce exclaimed over her blotched and mottled appearance, that Mrs.Ware decided she must be coming down with some kind of rash.

It was only to prevent her mother sending for a doctor, that Mary finally confessed with tears what she had done.
"Why didn't you ask somebody ?" said Joyce trying not to let her voice betray the laughter which was choking her, for Mary showed a grief too deep to ridicule.
"I--I was ashamed to," she confessed, "and I wanted to surprise you all.
The advertisement said g-grow b-beautiful while you sleep, and now--oh, it's _spoiled_ me!" she wailed.

"And I can't go to the house-party--" "Yes, you can, goosey," said Joyce, consolingly.