wonder you _talented_ ones didn't guess it long ago! Listen!
Loraine's talent is writing--we all know she'll be an author some day.
Laura Ann's is art. Oh, you needn't laugh--need she, girls? One of these
days we're all going to a 'hanging,' and _it'll be Laura Ann's!_
Billy's talent everybody knows. She can play wicked folks good, if
there's a piano handy. Well, what is my talent? Don't everybody speak at
once!" The girl's flushed face defied them. It was bitter with longing
to be a Talented One.

[Illustration: "YOU POOR LITTLE BLESSED!" SHE MURMURED.]

"Dear!" It was like gentle Loraine to begin with a "dear," and like her,
too, to cross the room to T.O. and touch her little bitter face with
cool fingers. "Dear, don't you worry--your talent is _there._"

"Where?" demanded T.O. Then she laughed. "I suppose you mean buried in
a handkerchief! But I shall never be able to dig it out--never! There's
such an awful pile of them on top! They keep piling on new ones every
day. If I keep on selling handkerchiefs till I'm seventy-five, I'll
never get down to my talent."

It was, after all, quite true, though none of them would acknowledge
it--except the Talentless One herself. She was, as she insisted, the odd
one in the busy little B-Hive. Her very face, small and dark and lean,
was an "odd" one; the faces of the other three were marked by an
indefinable something that she called talent, and she was not far wrong.
A subtle refinement, intellectuality, asserted itself gently in all
three of them. The dark little face of T.O. was vivacious and keen, but
not refined or intellectual.