"On a plane!--" Susan stared. "A plane is a kind of grade in life. We keep going up them like stairs, and the quieter and happier people live, the higher is the plane on which they are. It's very simple, when you come to understand it. It's sort of like a marble staircase built out of a marsh and on up a mountain. You can stand down in the mud, or step higher in the reeds, or step higher in the water (generally it's hot water," Jane interrupted herself to say with a little smile). "Or out on the dry earth, or higher where it's flowers, or higher or higher. But every time you get up a step you leave all the mess of all the lower steps behind you forever. Do you understand?" "No, I don't." "Why, don't you see that if you lift yourself higher than your surroundings, of course you'll have other conditions around you and be really living another life? We can't possibly be bound by conditions lower than our souls. It's a law. I'll help you to understand it, and then it will help you to not be at all troubled over Aunt Matilda. You'll be above her. Don't you see? One can always get out of a disagreeable life by lifting one's self above it." "But I did stay up-stairs," said Susan, with beautiful literalness. "I think it's awful to have to keep a plane above any one, when the whole house is yours." "I didn't mean that," said Jane. "I meant that mentally you must get above her. It isn't in words or in thoughts,--you must _be_ above her. You must get free. I must help you. You can do it. Anybody can do it. And as soon as you are free in your spirit, your life will change. Our daily life follows our thoughts. Our thoughts make a pattern, and life weaves it. The world of stars that we can't hardly grasp at all is all God's thought. The life in this house was your thought and Aunt Matilda's." "It wasn't mine," said Susan quickly; "it was hers." "Well, it's mine now," said Jane. "That's the true business of the Sunshine Nurses. They must get a new thought into a house and get it to growing well. Then they'll leave the true sunshine there forever after." Susan's eyes were very curious--very bright. "I declare I don't see how you'll do it here," she said. "I can't look at Matilda any new way, as I know of. Whatever she does, she does just exactly as I don't like it." "I suppose that you try her, too." "Well, I didn't die; of course she minded that. But I couldn't die. You can't die just to order." "No, of course not; I didn't mean that." Jane was quite serious. "I don't blame you at all for not doing that." Susan had finished and rose from the table. "Let's leave the dishes and go out in the yard," she said. "I'm awfully anxious to keep on at this till we find a way out, if you think that you can; I go about wild when I think of her. I'm ready for anything except staying in bed any more."