Best
Looking Girl in Town

Thyra Samter Winslow

From
the time she was thirteen Rilla Mabry had been ashamed of her
appearance. It was then that she started growing taller than the other
girls. She was also awkward  as well as tall and she was too thin.

 By the time she was twenty she was fully convinced that her
appearance was really something terrible . All of the other girls seemed
little and cute and attractive. No matter what hat Rilla wore it seemed
wrong. She was much too tall to wear tailored clothes. And thin dresses
hung around her loosely.

All of the girls and boys in the group liked Rilla. She was
a fine girl – if you could forget the way she looked. Even her hair was
wrong-rather stringy- but she had a pleasant and attractive face.

In spite of her looks Rilla had a boy friend. He was Patrick
Redding and his father kept a grocery store. Pat wasn’t any great price
–but then you couldn’t expect Rilla, with her looks to do any better.
People feel that  Rilla ought to be satisfied. Pat was a  nice looking
boy, and he shouldn’t be considered unimportant.

Rilla didn’t consider Pat unimportant. She was grateful to him for being
nice to her. She was as pleasant and  as friendly as she could be. As a
matter of fact she liked Patrick a lot. He was fun to be with. She would
have been perfectly satisfied except for the fact that she was in love
with Shane Tennant. All of which did her little good – for Shane was the
price of the town. Shane’s father was a banker – and rich.  

His
mother was the social leader of the town. Shane was      well much
taller than Rilla- and handsome besides.

Pat went into the grocery business with her father. Shane
went into the bank. That’s the way sons do in small towns unless they
have definite ideals about law or one of the other professions. Rilla
didn’t do anything. Her parents have just enough money so she didn’t
have to work. She went to parties with Patrick- and admired for Shane
from a distance. The towns people felt that she would marry with Pat,
that he’d take over his father’s grocery store, and that they’d settle
down.

That might have happened if it hadn’t been for Leslie
Durant. Leslie Durant was - and still is-a well known magazine
illustrator. And he came to Morrisville to visit an aunt. And he was
taken an anywhere to all of the parties , of course. He was the social
lion of the season. He stayed in town only for few days – but that was
long enough for a lot to happen.

He
saw Rilla Mabry. Rilla was standing near the door and she was looking at
Shane Tennant. She never knew her face how much showed what she was
thinking about. No one else noticed- but Durant being knew, understood
the situation. He saw Rilla standing not quite straight because she
didn’t feel quite as tall that way, in a    badly fitted dress and her
hair not quite smooth- and he saw Shane, perfectly dressed, self
confident, good looking. And then Pat came to ask Rilla for the dance.

On
the second day of his visit Durant  made his remarkable statement. He
told anyone who would listen to him that Rilla Mabry was by far the best
looking girl in town. One of the best looking girl he’d ever seen.

Rilla never had a compliment about her looks before. She had always been
shy, self conscious, and often unhappy about her appearance. And now the
first authority in beauty who had ever been in town claimed that she was
the price.

When
Durant, himself told her what he  thought of her she was filled with
confusion. She managed finally to thank him. And later, very shyly , she
went up to him.

“I
do wish that you would tell me how can look better,“ she said.

“That’s not really my particular kind of work, “ he told her, “ but may
be if we get together …..”

They
got together the next morning. Durant came to Rilla’s house. And with
Rilla’s mother acting as helper, they did things to Rilla and to Rilla’s
clothes. Durant made her stand up straight . and he rearranged her hair.
And he told her what was wrong with the clothes she wore.

That
night there was a dance for Durant- his last evening in town.  And, as
he had thought when he started things, Rilla was, for the first time in
her life, the center of attention. Toward the end of the evening Durant
had the satisfaction of seeing Shane Tennant dancing very attentively
with Rilla, Shane Tenant  whom Rilla had looked at with longing eyes –
and who had paid any attention to her.

Durant went back
to his home and his work in  New York and forgot about the whole thing.
Years passed. And then, just the other day, this happened:

Durant was
lunching alone at a restaurant when an attractive, tall woman, past her
first youth, came up to him.

“ You don’t
remember me ?” she said.

Durant didn’t
remember her.

“ I am Rilla
tenant – I was Rilla Mabry when you knew me. You came to my home town
and – and rather made my life over. Remember now ?”

“Of course I do “
said Durant. “ I remember very well. It was my one attempt at changing
the destiny of another person. “

“You did a
wonderful job.“ said Rilla. There was a strange note in her voice which
he didn’t understand.

“You married the
boy you were in love with. I see. His name was Tannent wasn’t it ?”

“Why, yes” said
Rilla. “ But how did you remember the name ? And how did  you know I was
in love with him?”

“I am good at
remembering names. And I saw you looking at him. Simplicity itself! And
to think that I was the cause!

“Yes  you were”
said Rilla.“ It was very funny when you look back on it. There I was
going with Patrick Redding, and in love with Shane, and terribly unhappy
and awkward. And you came down and said I was a beauty- so automatically
I became a beauty. And the boys all wanted to go out with me. And I
married Shane.”

“Wonderful “ said
Durant. And he smiled happily. “ How are you getting along , now ? “

“That is the
difficult part. “ said Rilla. “ You shouldn’t have asked. “

“Shane and I got
married. And it didn’t get along very well though I was awfully happy in
the beginning. The Tennant lost all of their money in a bank failure-
and my family had its money in the Tennant bank by that time, so our
money went, too. Then Shane fell in love with a chorus girl. I got a
divorce of course. I’ve been teaching in a girls’ school for the past
three years. “

“ That’s too bad!”
said Durant. “ But maybe that was better than marrying that other boy
whom you didn’t love.”

“ May be,”  said
Rilla. “You can never tell. Love goes … Patrick Redding took his
father’s  grocery store  and married the cutest girl in town. They have
three children and are very happy. And, oh , yes he became quite
ambitious and started a chain of grocery store. Now he is the richest
and most important man in town”

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Thyra Samter
Winslow