when I awoke: was awakened by what was, probably, an unusually violent fit of coughing. I scolded her, my thin-faced little darling, as I got the inhaler ready: she, between her coughings, smiling at me.
After tea—I sitting by the bedside, holding her hand and thinking—she all at once quite opened her eyes and looked at me.
'Where do people go to when they die?' she said.
I looked at her dear child's eyes, but did not answer her.
'Do tell me,' she said, in a child's aggrieved tone, rumpling her brow, 'Don't tease me! Tell me true!'
After a pause, I answered her:
'I believe that they go into the earth and the air from which they came.'
'Yes,' she said, ' but that's not their spirits. What do their spirits do?'
'Their spirits, too, go into the earth and the air.'
She shook her head:
'No,' she said, 'their spirits go up'—(looking up)—'up into heaven!'
I lifted her hand, and bent my head, and kissed her hand softly.
'But don't you think so too?' she said.
'No,' I said, still bent over her hand, 'But' (looking up at her and smiling), 'what does it matter what I think, dear?'
She began to cough, and went on for a little. Then:
'Don't you think,' she said, 'that good people go up to heaven when they die?'
'Don't talk any more in this way!' I said, getting up and sitting on the bed by her, 'or I shall—Well, I shall have to stop you some way.' And I put my arm round her shoulders, and drew her head to mine.
'Ah,' she said, drawing her head back so as to look at me, 'but don't you?'
'Don't I what?'
Her brow rumpled.
'Don't tease me!' she said, 'You must tell me!'
'Very well,' I said, 'I will tell you, then. 'I don't think anyone goes up to heaven, dear, however good
