I did. I was about ten once more. It was dark, and I was passing a
drug-store, with huge red and green and purple bottles glistening in
the gas-lit windows; and it had just occurred to me that I, too, must
die, and be locked up in a box, and let down with trunk-straps into a
hole, like Father was.... So I said, "Yes."

"And yet we've got to! Oh, I don't see how people can go on living
like everything was all right when that's always getting nearer,--when
they know they've got to die before very long. Because they dance and
go on picnics and buy hats as if they were going to live forever.
I--oh, I can't understand."

"They get used to the idea, I reckon. We're sort of like the rats in
the trap at home, in our stable," I suggested, poetically. "We can bite
the wires and go crazy, like lots of them do, if we want to, or we can
eat the cheese and kind of try not to think about it. Either way, there's
no getting out till they come to kill us in the morning."

"Yes," sighed Stella; "I suppose we must make the best of it."

"It's the only sensible thing to do, far as I can see."

"But it is all so big--and so careless about us!" she said, after a
little. "And we don't know--we can't know!--what is going to happen to
you and me. And we can't stop its happening!"

"We'll just have to make the best of that, too," I protested,
dolefully.

Stella sighed again, "I hope so," she assented; "still, I'm scared of