I doubt if she could have got
it out at all.

"No, dear," said Aunt Jessica, quietly. "Most of us don't like death.
I wonder if your feeling isn't due to the fact that you think of it as
an end?"

"What is it," asked Elliott, "but an end?" She was so astonished that
her words sounded almost brusque.

"I like to think of it as a coming alive," said Aunt Jessica, "a
coming alive more vigorously than ever. The world is beginning to
think of it so, too."

Elliott lay still after Aunt Jessica had gone out of the room and
tried to think about what she had said. It was quite the oddest thing
that anybody had said yet. But all she really succeeded in thinking
about was the quiet certainty in Aunt Jessica's voice, the comforting
clasp of Aunt Jessica's arms, and the kiss still warm on her lips.

CHAPTER VII

PICNICKING

"I feel like a picnic," said Mother Jess, "a genuine all-day-in-the-woods
picnic."

It was rather queer for a grown-up to say such a thing right out like
a girl, Elliott thought, but she liked it. And Aunt Jessica was
sitting back on her heels, just like a girl too, looking up from the
border where she was working. Elliott had caught sight of her blue
chambray skirt under a haze of blue larkspurs and had come over to see
what she was doing. It proved to be weeding with a clawlike thing
that, wielded by Aunt Jessica's right hand, grubbed out weeds as fast
as she could toss them into a basket with her left. Elliott was
surprised. Weeding a flower-bed when, as she happened to know, the
garden beets weren't finished did not square with her notions of what
was what on the Cameron farm. She was so surprised that she answered
absently, "That sounds fine. I think I feel so, too," and kept on
wondering about Aunt Jessica.

"We usually have a picnic at this time of year when the haying is
done," said that lady, and fell again to her weeding. "It is
astonishing how fast a weed can grow. Look at that!" and she held up a
spreading mat of green chickweed. "I have had to neglect the borders
shamefully this summer."

Elliott squatted down beside her and twined her fingers in a tuft of
grass. "May I help?" She gave a little tug to the grass.

"Delighted to have you. Look out! That's a Johnny-jump-up."

"Is it? Goodness! I thought it was a weed!"

"Here is one in blossom. Spare Johnny. He is a faithful friend till
the winter snows."

"Johnny-jump-up." Elliott's laughter gurgled over the name. "But he
d