"What are you two laughing at?" broke in Kate Sencerbox, leaning over from her table beyond. "Bel Bree, where are your crimps?"
In the ardor of her work, or talk, or both, Bel's hair, as usual, had got pushed recklessly aside.
"O, I only have a little smile in my hair early in the morning," replies quick, cheery Bel. "It never crimps decidedly, and it all gets straightened out prim enough as the day's work comes on. It's like the grass of the field, and a good many other things; in the morning it is fresh and springeth up; in the evening it giveth up, and is down flat."
"I guess you'll find it so," said Elise Mokey, splenetically.
"Was that what you were laughing at?" asked Kate. "Seems to me you choose rather aggravating subjects."
"Aggravations are as good as anything to laugh at, if you only know how," Bel Bree said.
"They're always handy, at any rate," said Elise.
"I thought 'aggravate' meant making worse than it is," said quiet little Mary Pinfall.
"Just it, Molly!" answered Bel Bree, quick as a flash. "Take a plague, make it out seven times as bad as it is, so that it's perfectly ridiculous and impossible, and then laugh at it. Next time you put your finger on it, as the Irishman said of the flea, it isn't there."
"That's hommerpathy," said Miss Proddle. "Hommerpathy cures by aggravating."