“Why don’t you get a tonic?”

“Well, I have been thinking of it, but Dr. Wallace gives such dreadful strong medicines, and Lucy is so delicate, that I have hesitated.  I don’t know but I ought to take her to Alford to Dr. Gilbert, but she doesn’t want to go.  She says it is too expensive, and she says there’s nothing the matter with her; but she has these terrible headaches almost every other day, and she doesn’t eat enough to keep a sparrow alive, and I can’t help being worried about her.”

“It doesn’t seem right,” agreed Mrs. Whitman.  “Last time I was here I thought she didn’t look real well.  She’s got color, a real pretty color, but it isn’t the right kind.”

“That’s just it,” said Mrs. Ayres, wrinkling her forehead.  “The color’s pretty, but you can see too plain where the red leaves off and where the white begins.”

“Speaking about color,” said Mrs. Whitman, “I am going to ask you something.”

“What?”

“Do you really think Miss Farrel’s color is natural?”

“I don’t know.  It looks so.”

“I know it does, but I had it real straight that she keeps some pink stuff that she uses in a box as bold as can be, right in sight on her wash-stand.”

“I don’t know anything about it,” said Mrs. Ayres, in her weary, gentle fashion.  “I have heard, of course, that some women do use such things, but none of my folks ever did, and I never knew anybody else who did.”

Then Sylvia opened upon the subject which had brought her there.  She had reached it by a process as natural as nature itself.

“I know one thing,” said she:  “I have no opinion of that woman.  I can’t have.  When I hear a woman saying such things as I have heard of her saying about a girl, when I know it isn’t true, I make up my mind those things are true about the woman herself, and she’s talking about herself, because she’s got to let it out, and she makes believe it’s somebody else.”

Mrs. Ayres’s face took on a strange expression.  Her sweet eyes hardened and narrowed.  “What do you mean?” she asked, sharply.

“I guess I had better not tell you what I mean.  Miss Farrel gives herself clean away just by her looks.  No living woman was ever made so there wasn’t a flaw in her face but that there was a flaw in her soul.  We’re none of us perfect.  If there ain’t a flaw outside, there’s a flaw inside; you mark my words.”

“What was it she said?” asked Mrs. Ayres.

“I don’t mean to make trouble.  I never did, and I ain’t going to begin now,” said Sylvia.  Her face took on a sweet, hypocritical expression.

“What did she say?”

Sylvia fidgeted.  She was in reality afraid to speak, and yet her very soul itched to do so.  She answered, evasively.  “When a woman talks about a girl running after a man, I think myself she lives in a glass house and can’t afford to throw stones,” said she.  She nodded her head unpleasantly.