"Yes," she said, vaguely; "of--of everything."
I understood. Even then I knew something of the occasional insufficiency of words.
"It is a big world," I assented, "and lots of people are having a right hard time in it right now. I reckon there is somebody dying this very minute not far off."
"It's all--waiting for us!" Stella had forgotten my existence. "It's bringing us so many things--and we don't know what any of them are. But we've got to take them, whether we want to or not. It isn't fair. We've got to--well, got to grow up, and--marry, and--die, whether we want to or not. We've no choice. And it may not matter, after all. Everything will keep right on like it did before; and the stars won't care; and what we've done and had done to us won't really matter!"
"Well, but, Stella, you can have a right good time first, anyway, if you keep away from ugly things and fussy people. And I reckon you really go to Heaven afterwards if you haven't been really bad,--don't you?"
"Rob,--are you ever afraid of dying?" Stella asked, "very much afraid--Oh, you know what I mean."
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!"