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 lowed her fancy out, as we always did, and here she was looking just the way I did when I opened that box of compasses.

"Bess," I said, "what's got you?"

Bess hesitated, and then seemed suddenly to make up her mind, and lifting up her head and looking me squarely in the face, she said,—"Christian Science."

I gasped and stared at her. Bess and I had talked religion together a great deal, and we had always agreed that, to be honest with ourselves, we had to have something we could understand,—something we could study out and figure on, like arithmetic, instead of something we had to commit to memory and believe only because some one said that it was so. We wanted to know that a thing was so because it was reasonable, and would prove, and not just because some one else believed it. And so now, for her to sit up there and say that Christian Science had "got her," it was no wonder I stared.

"Well?" said Bess, as she always did when it was my turn to talk, and I didn't.

"Nothing to say," I said.

"Well," said Bess again, smoothing down her