The forehead was rather low.

Esther had nice teeth which accident had preserved white.

It was an arrestive rather than a beautiful face, though charming enough when she smiled.

If the grace and candor of childhood could have been disengaged from the face, it would have been easier to say whether it was absolutely pretty.
It came nearer being so on Sabbaths and holidays when scholastic supervision was removed and the hair was free to fall loosely about the shoulders instead of being screwed up into the pendulous plait so dear to the educational eye.

Esther could have earned a penny quite easily by sacrificing her tresses and going about with close-cropped head like a boy, for her teacher never failed thus to reward the shorn, but in the darkest hours of hunger she held on to her hair as her mother had done before her.