"Do you really believe that wanting anything shows that one is going to get it? You said something like that the other day." "I know that one can get anything one wants," Jane answered gravely; "of course the responsibility of some kinds of wanting is awfully heavy. But the law doesn't alter." "Can you explain it to me?" "Yes, that's it," said Susan, "you tell us how to manage. I want to get something myself. Or I mean it's that I want something I've got to go away again. Or I guess I'd better not try to say what I mean." "But you won't either of you understand what I mean, when I tell you," said Jane. "It's just as I said before, it takes a lot of study to get your brain-cells to where they can hold an idea that's really new to you. Heads are like empty beehives,--you have to have the comb before you can have the honey, and every different kind of study requires a different kind of cells just for its use alone. When things don't interest us, it's because the brain-cells in regard to that subject have never been developed. That's all. That's what they taught me." "I think it's interesting," said Susan. "I always thought that the inside of my head was one thing that I didn't need to bother about. Seems it isn't, after all. Go on, you Sunshine Jane, you." "I'm like your aunt. I thought that what I thought was the last thing that mattered," said Emily. "Everything matters. There's nothing in this world that doesn't matter, because this world is all matter. Anything that doesn't matter must be spirit. Don't you see that when you say and really mean that a thing doesn't matter, you mean that to you it isn't material,--that it's no part of your world?" "Dear me, I never thought of that," said Susan, "then I suppose as long as things do matter to us, it means we just hang on to them and hold them for all we're worth." "Yes." "But, Jane, thoughts can't matter much? Or we can forget things." "There isn't anything that we can think of at all that we are ever free not to think about again--that is, if it's a good thought," said Jane. "If a thought comes to us at all, it comes with some responsibility attached. Either we are meant to gain strength by dismissing it, if it seems wrong, or it's our duty to do something with it, if it's right. Most people's minds are all littered up with thoughts that they never either use or put away. That's what makes them so stupid." "Goodness!" exclaimed Susan. "Why, I never put a thought away in my life,--not as I know of." "I've never thought anything at all about my thoughts," said Emily, looking rather startled. "Lots of people don't," said Jane; "they act just as a woman would in making a dress, if she cut it out a bit now and a bit then without ever laying the pattern back even, and then joined it anywhere any time, and then was surprised when it didn't even prove fit to wear--not to speak of looking all witched." "Is that what ails some lives?" Emily asked, looking yet more startled.