"Isn't he!" said the girl. Then she lowered her voice and put her head close to the boy's. "I cry myself to sleep some nights thinking what would I do if Dad died."
"This seems a safe sort of a place," said Dallas consolingly.
"It is and it isn't. One day he fell from a tree and hurt his back. He's too bold."
My young master's mind took a youthful skip. "I say," he observed, "you tell me you don't kill pigs, but you must kill sheep. I saw a skin."
"Mr. Talker did it. That was Mrs. Goodbody. We didn't eat her. She was sold. Dad gets our meat from across the lake. We couldn't eat our friends. Mrs. Goodbody didn't know what was happening to her. Mr. Talker held out some salt. She followed him to the little electric house. She licked the salt, then she just fell down peacefully. There's some new way of killing sheep. I don't know what it is."
"Of course," said Dallas uneasily, "we all have to die."
"Dad says to live well and not fuss about death and when our time comes he says he hopes we'll all go as comfortably as our animals do. It isn't the death that's bad, Cousin. It's the teasing and torturing before death."
Dallas shuddered. "It's awful to suffer."
"But sometimes you've got to suffer," said this sensible girl. "Then grin and bear it—Hello! What's the matter, Guardie?"