For months and months and months he
seemed only a bundle of exposed nerves--that is, where he had any movement
or sensation at all.
Now a past, however escutcheoned and fame-enrolled, is even more starvation
diet than a future of affection and self-confidence. No help was to be had
from either of their homes; it was the day of self-help for all.
Bessie wondered why this had been sent on _her_, but she took a couple of
boarders at once, she sold sponge-cake and beaten biscuit, she got up
classes in bread-making. And Guy stopped her busy passing to draw her hand
to his lips, or watched her with dumb eyes.
Several of her friends, after trying her sewing-machine, then still
something of a novelty, ordered duplicates. Guy suggested as a joke that
she charge the makers a commission.
"The idea of trading on friendship?" Bessie laughed.
"Oh, I don't know," Guy reflected, more seriously. "How about these
boarders, then? That's trading on hospitality."
It was one of those minute flashes of illumination that, multiplied and
collected, become the glow of a new light, the signal of a revolution.
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