"
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
diminishing perspectives, from the woman she was to the girl she had been.
She had been quite unconscious of the slow transformation in her habits of
thought. It is so in life. One toils up the thickly wooded hillside, intent
only on the footing, and comes suddenly on a high clearing, overlooking
valley and path, defining a new horizon.
"I never had the best of everything, Mrs. Grey," she said. "Nobody has.
Every life and every situation in life has its bad conditions--and its good
ones. I haven't had any more happiness--nor trouble than most people. It
strikes me things are pretty equally divided. We only think they aren't
when we don't know all about it. We see the surface of other people's
lives, not their private drawbacks or compensations. There are always both.
But other people's troubles are so much easier to bear than our own, their
good luck so much less deserved and qualified! With all I had as a girl I
didn't have contentment.
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