"Gar, dear, did you ever sit down and count the cost?" asked Mrs. Halliburton. "I fear it will not be your luck to go to college." "Labor omnia vincit," cried out Gar. "You have heard us stumbling over our Latin often enough, mamma, to know what that means. Frank will need to count the cost, too, if he is ever to make himself into a barrister; and he says he _will_ be one." "Oh, you two vain boys!" cried Jane, laughing. "Mamma," spoke up Janey from the sofa--and her breathing was laboured now--"is there harm in their wishing this?" "Not at all. They are laudable aims. Only Frank and Gar are so poor and friendless that I fear the hopes are too ambitious to end in anything but disappointment." Janey called Gar to her, and pulled his face down to a level with hers, whispering softly, "Strive well, Gar, and trust in God." Later, when Jane had to be out on an indispensable errand, Dobbs came in to sit with Janey. She brought her some jelly in a saucer. "I am nearly tired of it, Dobbs," said Janey. "I grow tired of everything. And I don't like to say so, because it seems so ungrateful." "It's the nature of illness to get tired of things," responded Dobbs, who thought it was her mission never to cease buoying Janey up with hope. "You'll be better when the hot weather comes in." "No, I shan't, Dobbs. I shall never get better now." A combination of feelings, indignation predominating, nearly took away Dobbs's breath. "Who on earth has been putting that grim notion in your head?" asked she. "It is true, Dobbs." "True!" ejaculated Dobbs. "Who has been saying it to you? I want to know that." "Mamma for one. She----" "Of all the stupids!" burst forth Dobbs, drowning what Janey was about to say. "To frighten the child by telling her she's going to die!" "It does not frighten me, Dobbs. I like to lie and think of it." Dobbs fell into a doubt whether Janey was in her senses. "Like to lie and think of being screwed down in a coffin, and put into the cold ground, and left there till the judgment day!" uttered she. "Oh, but, Dobbs, you must know better than that," returned Jane. "_We_ are not put into the coffin; it is only our bodies that are put into the coffin; we go into the world of departed spirits." "De-par-ted what?" ejaculated Dobbs, whose notions of the future--the life after this life--were not very definite; and who could not have been more astonished had Jane begun to talk to her in Greek. "Mamma has always tried to explain these things to us," said Jane. "She has made them as clear to us as they can be made, and she has taught us not to fear death. She says a great mistake is often made by those who bring up children. They are taught to run away from death as something gloomy and frightful, instead of being shown its bright side." "Well, I never heard the like!" exclaimed Dobbs, lost in wonder. "How can there be a bright side to death?--in a horrid coffin, with brass nails and tin-tacks that screw you down?"