Doubtless Bessie's color was partly excitement and rush.

"Oh, I'm well," absently.

"Funny kind of dyspepsia, wasn't it, to be cured by eating around, the way
you have to do."

"Oh, dyspepsia!" The nettles brought back her attention. People needn't
belittle her troubles! "I still have that dyspepsia. But if you had to be
as busy as I, Mrs. Grey, you'd know that there are times when nothing but
sudden death can interfere." Even Mrs. Grey's prickings, however, were
washed over to-day by Balm of Gilead. "Still, it has come to something. The
company has given me Cincinnati for my territory."

"Really?" Not that Mrs. Grey doubted her veracity. "Well, you always did
succeed at anything you put your hand to. It has been the most surprising
thing! You know, I tell everybody, Bessie, that you deserve all the credit
in the world for the way you have taken hold." Bessie stiffened; neither
need they sympathize too much! "A girl brought up as you were, who always
had the best of everything." _The best of everything!_ The familiar phrase
was like a bell, sending wave after wave of memory singing through Bessie's
mind. "And still I never saw any one to whom the wind has been so tempered
as to you: when you were sick you could afford it, and now that it's
inconvenient--Things always did seem to work smoother with you, and come
out better, than with any of the rest of us."

Bessie sat looking at her, and, in the speech, saw her own petulance of a
moment before--any number of her own speeches, in fact, inverted, as things
are in a glass. Indeed, Mrs. Grey had held up a reflector. Bessie had met
herself. And she saw herself, as in a mirror-maze, from all angles, down