She looked up, with a smile which I thought quite beautiful—looked up, not at him, nor at the trees, but away and above and beyond, as it were.
"Yes," she said; "I've longer sight than you, my dear. I've sight to see up and up into heaven itself, and you haven't. It makes a deal of difference."
"Bless me, mother, don't talk like that," says father, in a sort of hurry. "It sounds as if you was going to die this very night."
"And if I was, I'm ready," said she. "It wouldn't be grief to me to hear the chariot wheels coming near."
But I was sitting close by, and I turned and said, "Grannie, please don't want to go just yet."
"No," she said, "I'm willing to wait."
"Well, you go beyond common folks, somehow," father said. "There ain't many that care to talk about dying as cool as you do."
"No," she said. "And I couldn't either, if death was to me what it is to many a one, a plunge into the outer darkness, away from the smile of God. That would be awful."
"Well, well, we needn't talk about it now," father said, fidgeting. "You're the best woman that ever lived, though you don't think yourself so. But all the world can't be like you."
And he got up, and hummed a tune, and plucked a bit of sweet-william, and walked about; so grannie could not say any more.