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 her yet; and sometimes I feel distinctly sour, when I think of her coming."

"I feel that way all the time," I said. "She'll just have to make the best of what she finds when she comes, that's all. I'm going to be selfish and take it the way that will be easiest for me. I haven't got but one life to live."

Bess shook her head. "We're taking it the way that will be the very hardest for us both, and her too. It's a great deal harder to be sour than'to be sweet."

"Not for me."

"Yes it is. When a thing is all over and you come to average it up, you'll find that all of the hard things have come of the sourness,—and all of the easy things have come of the sweetness."

That was a new way of looking at it.

"And so I was thinking," went on Bess, "that if we each of us want to do something for the other,—not for Christmas, but for friendship,—the really best thing would be for us both to do something for that other girl."

I bit some of the ragged edges off of the top of my lead pencil. "How can we?" I asked, after