There was one "pretend" game that Sally liked to play more than anything else. She would move the dining-room chairs to form a line. Then she would place her dolls upon them, fill her toy suitcase with dolls' clothes, and pretend that she and the dolls were traveling on a train.

Mother knew how much Sally liked to play "train," and she found a passage on page 392 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy which she thought Sally could grasp and think about.

"Stand porter at the door of thought," she read aloud. "Admitting only such conclusions as you wish realized in bodily results, you will control yourself harmoniously."

As Mother read aloud about standing porter, Sally pictured the porters who, in the United States, stand by the doors of a train, making sure that the people who enter the cars either have reservations for themselves or are accompanying those who do.

Mother explained that as a porter watches to help the people who belong in his car, so Sally could stand porter at the door of her thought, letting in only the thoughts that belonged to her as God's child. Sally could be a porter in still another way, her mother explained, because she could turn away or refuse admittance to wrong thoughts or suggestions of error. If Sally did this, Mother continued, her thoughts would be those of happiness and love, and Sally would find only good appearing in her life.

Sally liked to welcome in the good, kind, and loving ideas that came to her and to turn away the selfish or unkind thoughts.

Sally had many little friends. Some of them were not Christian Scientists, and occasionally they wanted to pretend that they were sick. Sally's mother told her never to pretend anything like that, because no such game should be played by children. Mother explained that it would not be honest for a Christian Science girl or boy to say that sickness is not real only when one seemed to be ill and to play a make-believe state of illness when one felt free and well. Sally realized that this would not be right. And for a while she was obedient.

One day Linda, who was in Sally's Christian Science Sunday School class, came over to spend the morning. Linda's mother, too, had told her not to make a game of an error like sickness. Sally and Linda, however, decided they wanted to do something they knew they were not allowed to do. Sally closed the door to her room in order to keep Mother from hearing them, and they took turns pretending they were ill.

Later they went outdoors to play. Soon everything began to go wrong. They argued and quarreled, and finally, although both little girls had looked forward to a much longer playtime, Mother had to send Linda home and take Sally into the house.

As Mother stood before Sally, looking at the tear-stained and rebellious little face, she turned her thought to God for guidance. She had never before found Sally so unruly and disagreeable, and she was puzzled. Yet she remembered the words of one of her favorite Psalms (139:3,4): "Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether."

Suddenly it came to Mother what the trouble was. "Sally," she asked, "did you and Linda play that you were sick?"

Sally hung her head and looked intently at the floor instead of at Mother. "What makes you think that was what we were doing?" she asked.

"The way you've been acting makes me think yon were disobedient were you, dear?"

"Yes-s-s," admitted Sally slowly.

"Well, you see, darling," Mother explained, "when you play that you' re sick you aren't standing porter at the door of thought, from playing make-believe sickness to believing sickness to be real is only a very short step. It is like opening wide the door and saying: 'Welcome, wrong thoughts! Come right in error!" And when you are disobedient and start believing untrue thoughts, and accepting them as your own, then everything begins to go wrong, because you are thinking of error as real, instead of knowing that you are governed by Love and good."

"I'm sorry!" exclaimed Sally. "I'm sorry, Mother, I forgot to be obedient and to stand porter. I won't play being sick again."

Sally was thinking. She rubbed the toe of her shoe around a circle in the carpet. Then she looked up at Mother again. "But what if I want to do wrong, the way I did today? How can I not want to?"

Mother remembered something that Mrs. Eddy says on page 210 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany." Taking Sally in her arms she repeated it softly, "Beloved Christian Scientists, keep your minds so filled with Truth and Love, that sin, disease, and death cannot enter them."

"When your consciousness is filled with Truth and Love, you are happy, Sally," Mother said, "and you can't be tempted to believe that there is any fun in error, because there isn't, as you just found out when you were playing with Linda. God gives His children all that is good. And only God can give what keeps us truly happy and well, for God creates and governs all that really exists."

Sally hugged Mother. "I'll try to remember that!" she said.

A few minutes later Mother heard Sally skipping about the house, singing. She knew then that Sally was once more being a good porter at her door of consciousness, and that the little girl's train of thought was filled with Truth and Love.