"I don't quite understand what you mean," said Susan, "but something's got to be done, of course, because otherwise she'll come home, and oh, my, her face when she sees me up and around!"
Jane knit her brows. "You see, Auntie," she said slowly, "there's only one thing to do. We've got to change ourselves completely; we've to get where we want her to come home and where we look forward to it—"
Susan stopped short and lifted up both hands. "Gracious, we can't ever do that! It isn't in humanity."
"Yes, we can do it," said Jane firmly; "people can always do anything that they can think out, and if we can think this out straight, we can do it."
"How?"
"It isn't easy to see in just the first minute, but I understand the principle of it and I know that we can work it, for I've seen it done. You do it by getting an entirely new atmosphere into the house."
"But you've done that already," interrupted Susan. "It isn't musty anywhere any more, and there's such a kind of a happy smell instead."
"I don't mean that kind of an atmosphere. I mean a change of feeling in ourselves. We've got to somehow make ourselves all over; we must really and truly be different."
"But I am made over, and you were all right, anyhow."
"No, I'm not all right," said Jane firmly. "I'm very wrong. I'm letting silly thoughts with which I've no business torment me dreadfully, and I'm not driving them out with any kind of resolution. Then we're both doing wrong about Aunt Matilda. We're making a narrow little black box of our opinion and crowding her into it all the time. There's nothing so dreadful as the way families just chain one another to their faults. Outsiders see all the nice things, and we have lots of courage to always live up to their opinions, but families spend most of their time just nailing those they love best into pretty little limits. You and I are so happy together, and we're changing ourselves and one another every day, but we never think that Aunt Matilda's also having experience and changing herself, too. We kind of forbid her to grow better."