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DOLLY was a goose. Not a real bird, white and pompous, with red bill and self-sufficient eyes, but that kindly, silly, pleasant little creature that men call “a goose,” in tones that soften as they utter the epithet.

She was very pretty; her great innocent light brown eyes had the wistful look of a spaniel’s when any thing troubled her, but never any thing of that doggish and dumb sadness which makes a spaniel’s eyes painful, for Dolly could speak. Her fluffy, wavy brown hair was always out of order, because no comb or pins could hold its bright willfulness down in proper shape. Either it floated on her shoulders in a half—curled, wandering mass that caught the sunshine in every wave and then lost it in rich darkness, only to rise on the next bright crest and glitter again; or, if she tried to knot it, it rose up in rebellion and made a halo about her graceful little head, curled about the shell-pink ears as if it loved them, wandered in stray tendrils over her round white throat, and misbehaved itself generally in the most bewitching and picturesque fashion. Dolly’s hair was the despair of all the other girls, and while she admired with a certain sentiment of respect their smooth coils and classic braids, impossible to achieve in her own coiffure, they admired with envy the soft light puffs that rolled from her fingers and took their places in rank, with only the aid of one long hair-pin, all over the top of her head, and then hung in loose long curls from that pile of curving billows down to her shoulders behind.