What was the use with Mrs. Grey?
But alone, the thought kept widening ring after ring: How little choice there was of conditions in life; how fortune tends to seek its level; how one man has the meat and another the appetite; and another, without either, can find in the fact the flavor of a joke or chew the cud of reflection over it. Of the three, Bessie thought she would rather be the one with the disposition. But that could be cultivated. Look at hers! Circumstances had started it in a sort of aside, but she would take the hint.
The cure for dissatisfaction was to recognize one's balance of good.
Guy was watching for her at the window. She was half conscious that he looked unusually haggard, but there were so many other thoughts at sight of him that they washed over the first.
She swung her reticule. “It's all right!” and she ran up the walk, a most feminine swirl of progress. She got to him breathless. “I've found a house that will give you its German correspondence to translate and write, and it won't be so much but that you can do it as you're able, within reason. Now, sir!”
For a minute it seemed as if Guy's whole body was alive. The weak and shaken invalid still had something of unconquerable boyishness in the lift of his head and the light of his eyes. “Good! That will do for a start.” The old spirit, to which hers always answered. If she didn't believe he would actually do something worth while in the end! Then promptly, of old habit, he thought of her. “Bibi! You took your time for that.”
“Not all of it, in good sooth, fair lord.” She spread out her skirts, lady-come-to-see fashion, and strutted across the room. “Mrs. Osbourne has a new 'job' and a 'raise.'” (Incidentally Mrs. Osbourne had never before been so advanced in her language.)
“Bully for you!” he shouted, so genuinely that she ran back to him and shook and hugged his shoulders. How she liked him!
“What a thorough girl you are, Bibi!”
“Oh, and to-day I've been laughing at myself; as silly as I used to be, counting so much on a mere change of circumstances. Of course something unpleasant will develop there too. But at least the harness will rub in a different place. On the whole, it will be better. Guy, do you know, I have just gotten rid of envy and discontent, and that without endangering ambition. I'll give you the charm; it's a sort of cabalistic spell—the four P's—Occupation, Responsibility, Purpose, and Philosophy.”