Page:Chetyates00yateiala.pdf/136

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Twinny looked at her. "How did you do it?" she asked, wonderingly.

"Just by understanding why I needn't be sick," said Bess.

"But when the way you feel keeps telling you something different, how can you?"

"Well," said Bess, "supposing you were doing an example in arithmetic, and some one kept whispering in your ear:—'Five and five are eleven, five and five are eleven,' you'd know it wasn't true; and though it might bother and confuse you some, it wouldn't make you miss your example, would it, unless you stopped and listened to it and let it mix you up?"

Twinny thought a minute. "No," she said at last; "not if I kept on 'tending to business." And then;—"But what do you do when you see sickness and such things? I always have to believe what I see, and what other people around me see and believe."

Bess took one of the skewers and wrote on the smooth sand: "5+5=11."

"There," she said, "Can you see that?"

"Yes."

"Well, do you believe it?"