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“Oh, he was an adventurous lad,” reminisced the elderly woman in a voice that creaked as much as her bones did, “Always into something, he was, and I was forever turning frogs and snakes out of his pockets.”

I laughed, imagining a young sandy-haired boy running around with a toad peeping out of his pocket, bouncing along as the boy raced home.

“And tell me dear, how long since your father passed away?”

“A little more than a year,” I told her.

She peered into my face intently. “You miss him very much, don’t you?”

“Very much.”

She kept looking into my face with soul-searching eyes. Ancient eyes that held the wisdom of decades. “Well, you live in a way that would make him proud, won’t you?”

I thought. I knew Comfort and Mother had said before that we should live in the way Father wanted. But would Father be proud of the way I was living? All the time I was spending closeted in my room, hiding away from the world…he wouldn’t want that for me. Nor did I want that for myself.

I looked back at the old woman. “I will, ma’am, thank you.”

I left the conversation resolved; I didn’t want to be bitter anymore. I didn’t want to hide anymore. What was I accomplishing by closing myself off and not living my life? Nothing. I was only hurting myself. Of course there would be times that someone would laugh at my face, but that was their problem, not mine. I thought of all the times Mother and Comfort had said that it was who you were that mattered, much more than what someone looked like.

Mother and Algernon were getting ready to run to their carriage for a honeymoon trip. I handed out bags of white rice to throw at them, and we showered them in rice as they ran to a white carriage. “Goodbye! Goodbye!” we all called. They waved from the window, and the carriage jolted into motion.

Mother and Algernon were to be gone for a week. After the wedding guests left, Comfort and Cynthia and I tidied up, cleaned up the decorations, stored chairs, and ate all the leftover cake. At one point, Comfort and I were alone, stacking the tables and chairs into a storage room.

“Comfort?” I asked.

“Yeah?”

“You told me before that it doesn’t matter what people look like.”

“Right.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“Sure I do!” she said. “There are tons of examples of why that is true.”

“Like what?”

Comfort thought for a moment, then snapped her fingers. “Do you remember Bernard?”

I thought. Bernard? Then memories flooded into my mind. “The bard’s apprentice?”

“Yes! Him! What do you remember about him?”

I thought back fondly to the days before the bard had been dismissed. His apprentice, Bernard the Bard, as we always called him, was hilarious. “He was really funny. He knew just how to compliment everyone to make them feel good about themselves. He knew more jokes than anyone, even Curtis or Father.”

“Right. What did he look like?”

I strained my memory. He had had a large nose, ears that stuck out perpendicular to his head, very crooked teeth, and several unfortunately sized and prominent warts. I didn’t want to say those things. “Well, he was short, had dark hair, was skinny…”

“He wasn’t very handsome,” Comfort amended for me. “Was he?”

I shook my head.

“Now, who would you rather have had for a friend, Bernard or Hubert?”

“Bernard, of course.”

“Why? He is much uglier than Hubert.”