I think I must have seen the picture in some illustrated volume, when a baby, or my mother may have dreamed it before I was born.
As a child I was not handsome.

When I consulted the triangular bit of looking-glass which I always carried with me, it showed a pale, sandy, and freckled face, shaded by locks like the color of seaweed when the sun strikes it in deep water.

My eyes were said to be indistinctive; they were a faint, ashen gray; but above them rose--my only beauty--a high, massive, domelike forehead, with polished temples, like door-knobs of the purest porcelain.
Our family was a family of governesses.

My mother had been one, and my sisters had the same occupation.

Consequently, when, at the age of thirteen, my eldest sister handed me the advertisement of Mr.
Rawjester, clipped from that day's "Times," I accepted it as my destiny.