Sometimes, too, we talk of some of the people for whom she cares; of her husband’s friends; of her scholars, or Dr. Bland, or Clo, or poor ’Bin Quirk, or of somebody down town whom she was planning to help this winter. Little Clo comes in as often as she is strong enough to see her, and sends over untold jellies and blanc-manges, which Faith and I have to eat. “But don’t let the child know that,” Auntie says. But more often we talk of the life which she is so soon to begin; of her husband and Roy; of what she will try to say to Christ; how much dearer He has grown to her since she has lain here in pain at His bidding, and how He helps her, at morning and at eventide and in the night-watches. We talk of the trees and the mountains and the lilies in the garden, on which the glory of the light that is not the light of the sun may shine; of the “little brooks” by which she longs to sit and sing to Faith; of the treasures of art which she may fancy to have about her; of the home in which her husband may be making ready for her coming, and wonder what he has there, and if he knows how near the time is now. But I notice lately that she more often and more quickly wearies of these things; that she comes back, and comes back again to some loving thought--as loving as a child’s--of Jesus Christ. He seems to be--as she once said she tried that He should be to Faith--her “_best_ friend.” Sometimes, too, we wonder what it means to pass out of the body, and what one will be first conscious of. “I used to have a very human, and by no means slight, dread of the physical pain of death,” she said to-day; “but, for some reason or other, that is slowly leaving me. I imagine that the suffering of any fatal sickness is worse than the immediate process of dissolution. Then there is so much beyond it to occupy one’s thoughts. One thing I have thought much about; it is that, whatever may be our first experience after leaving the body, it is not likely to be a _revolutionary_ one. It is more in analogy with God’s dealings that a quiet process, a gentle accustoming, should open our eyes on the light that would blind if it came in a flash. Perhaps we shall not see Him,--perhaps we could not bear it to see Him at once. It may be that the faces of familiar human friends will be the first to greet us; it may be that the touch of the human hand dearer than any but His own shall lead us, as we are able, behind the veil, till we are a little used to the glory and the wonder, and lead us so to Him.