WHEN I WAS A LITTLE GIRL

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO

SOMEWHERE BEYOND SEALED DOORS

WHEN I WAS A LITTLE
GIRL

BY
ZONA GALE

AUTHOR OF “THE LOVES OF PELLEAS AND ETARRE,”
“FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE,” ETC.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
AGNES PELTON

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1913

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1911, by The Curtis Publishing Company.

Copyright, 1913,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1913.

Norwood Press

J. B. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

To

THE LITTLE GIRL ON CONANT STREET
AND TO THE
MEMORY OF HER GRANDMOTHER
HARRIET BEERS

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

There used to be a little girl who does not come here any more. She is not dead, for when certain things happen, she stirs slightly where she is, perhaps deep within the air. When the sun falls in a particular way, when graham griddle cakes are baking, when the sky laughs sudden blue after a storm, or the town clock points in its clearest you-will-be-late way at nine in the morning, when the moonlight is on the midnight and nothing moves—then, somewhere beyond sealed doors, the little girl says something, and it is plain that she is here all the time.

You little child who never have died, in these stories I am trying to tell you that now I come near to understanding you. I see you still, with your over-long hair and your over-much chattering, your naughtiness and your dreams. I know the qualities that made you disagreeable and those that made you dear, and I look on you somewhat as spirit looks on spirit, understanding from within. I wish that we could live it again, you and I—not all of it, by any means, and not for a serious business; but now and then, for a joy and for an idleness. And this book is a way of trying to do it over again, together.

Will you care to come from the quiet where you are, near to me and yet remote? I think that you will come, for you were wont untiringly to wonder about me. And now here I am, come true, so faintly like her whom you dreamed, yet so like you yourself, your child, fruit of your spirit, you little shadowy mother....

If only words were moments

And I knew where they fly,

I’d make a tale of time itself

To tell you by and bye.

If only words were fathoms

That let us by for pearls,

I’d make a story ocean-strange

For little boys and girls.

But words are only shadow things.

I summon all I may.

Oh, see—they try to spell out Life!

Let’s act it, like a play.

When I was a Little Girl

I
IN THOSE DAYS

In those days time always bothered us. It went fast or it went slow, with no one interfering. It was impossible to hurry it or to hold it back.

“Only ten weeks more,” we invariably said glibly, when the Spring term began.

“Just think! We’ve—got—t-e-n—weeks!” we told one another at the beginning of vacation, what time we came home with our books, chanting it:—

“No more Latin,

No more French,

No more sitting on a hard wood bench.”

—both chorally and antiphonally chanting it.

Yet, in spite of every encouragement, the Spring term lasted immeasurably and the Summer vacation melted. It was the kindred difference of experience respectively presented by a bowl of hot ginger tea and an equal bulk of ice-cream.

In other ways time was extraordinary. We used to play with it: “Now is now. But now that other Now is gone and a Then is now. How did it do it? How do all the Nows begin?”

“When is the party?” we had sometimes inquired.

“To-morrow,” we would be told.

Next morning, “Now it’s to-morrow!” we would joyfully announce, only to be informed that it was, on the contrary, to-day. But there was no cause for alarm, for now the party, it seemed, had changed too, and that would be to-day. It was frightfully confusing.

“When is to-morrow?” we demanded.

“When to-day stops being,” they said.

But never, never once did to-day stop that much. Gradually we understood and humoured the pathetic delusion of the Grown-ups: To-day lasted always and yet the poor things kept right on forever waiting for to-morrow.

As for me, I had been born without the time sense. If I was told that we would go to drive in ten minutes, I always assumed that I could finish dressing my doll, tidy my play-house, put her in it with all her family disposed about her down to the penny black-rubber baby dressed in yarn, wash my face and hands, smooth my hair (including the protests that these were superfluous), make sure that the kitten was shut in the woodshed ... long before most of which the family was following me, haling me away, chiding me for keeping older folk waiting, and the ten minutes were gone far by. Who would have thought it? Ten minutes seem so much.

And if I went somewhere with permission to stay an hour! Then the hour stretched invitingly before me, a vista lined with crowding possibilities.

“How long can you stay?” we always promptly asked our guests, for there was a feeling that the quality of the game to be entered on depended on the time at our disposal. But when they asked me, it never was conceivable that anything so real as a game should be dependent on anything so hazy as time.

“Oh, a whole hour!” I would say royally. “Let’s play City.”

With this attitude Delia Dart, who lived across the street, had no patience. Delia was definite. Her evenly braided hair, her square finger tips, her blunt questions, her sense of what was due to Delia—all these were definite.

“City!” she would burst out. “You can’t play City unless you’ve got all afternoon.”

And Margaret Amelia and Betty Rodman, who were pretty definite too, would back Delia up; but since they usually had permission to stay all afternoon, they would acquiesce when I urged: “Oh, well, let’s start in anyhow.” Then about the time the outside wall had been laid up in the sand-pile and we had selected our building sites, the town clock would strike my hour, which would be brought home to me only by Delia saying:—

“Don’t you go. Will she care if you’re late?”

On such occasions we never used the substantive, but merely “she.” It is worth being a child to have a sense of values so simple and unassailable as that.

“I’m going to do just this much. I can run all the way home,” I would answer; and I would begin on my house walls. But when these were done, and the rooms defined by moist sand partitions, there was all the fascination of its garden, with walks to be outlined with a shingle and sprays of Old Man and cedar to be stuck in for trees, and single stems of Fever-few and Sweet Alyssum or Flowering-currant and Bleeding-heart for the beds, and Catnip for the borders, and a chick from Old-Hen-and-Chickens for a tropical plant. We would be just begun on the stones for the fountain when some alien consciousness, some plucking at me, would recall the moment. And it would be half an hour past my hour.

“You were to come home at four o’clock,” Mother would say, when I reached there panting.

“Why did I have to come home at four o’clock?” I would finally give way to the sense of great and arbitrary wrong.

She always told me. I think that never in my life was I bidden to do a thing, or not to do it, “because I tell you to.” But never once did a time-reason seem sufficient. What were company, a nap-because-I-was-to-sit-up-late, or having-to-go-somewhere-else beside the reality of that house which I would never occupy, that garden where I would never walk?

“You can make it the next time you go to Delia’s,” Mother would say. But I knew that this was impossible. I might build another house, adventure in another garden; this one was forever lost to me.

“... only,” Mother would add, “you can not go to Delia’s for ...” she would name a period that yawned to me as black as the abyss. “... because you did not come home to-day when you were told.” And still time seemed to me indefinite. For now it appeared that I should never go to Delia’s again.

I thought about it more and more. What was this time that was laid on us so heavy? Why did I have to get up because it was seven o’clock, go to school because it was nine, come home from Delia’s because the clock struck something else ... above all, why did I have to go to bed because it was eight o’clock?

I laid it before my little council.

“Why do we have to go to bed because it’s bed-time?” I asked them. “Which started first—bed-time or us?”

None of us could tell. Margaret Amelia Rodman, however, was of opinion that bed-time started first.

“Nearly everything was here before we were,” she said gloomily. “We haven’t got anything in the house but the piano and the rabbits that wasn’t first before us. Mother told father this morning that we’d had our stair-carpet fifteen years.”

We faced that. Fifteen years. Nearly twice as long as we had lived. If a stair-carpet had lasted like that, what was the use of thinking that we could find anything to control on the ground of our having been here first?

Delia Dart, however, was a free soul. “I think we begun before bed-time did,” she said decidedly. “Because when we were babies, we didn’t have any bed-time. Look at babies now. They don’t have bed-times. They sleep all the while.”

It was true. Bed-time must have started after we did. Besides, we remembered that it was movable. Once it had been half past seven. Now it was eight. Delia often sat up, according to her own accounts, much later even than this.

“Grown-ups don’t have any bed-time either,” Betty took it up. “They’re like babies.”

This was a new thought. How strange that Grown-ups and babies should share this immunity, and only we be bound.

“Who made bed-time?” I inquired irritably.

“S-h-h!” said Delia. “God did.”

“I don’t believe it,” I announced flatly.

“Well,” said Delia, “anyway, he makes us sleepy.”

This I also challenged. “Then why am I sleepier when I go to church evenings than when I play Hide-and-go-seek in the Brice’s barn evenings?” I submitted.

This was getting into theology, and Delia used the ancient method.

“We aren’t supposed to know all those things,” she said with superiority, and the council broke up.

That night I brought my revolt into the open. At eight o’clock I was disposing the articles in my play-house so that they all touched, in order that they might be able to talk during the night. It was well-known to me that inanimate objects must touch if they would carry on conversation. The little red chair and the table, the blue paper-weight with a little trembling figure inside, the silver vase, the mug with “Remember me” in blue letters, the china goat, all must be safely settled so that they might while away the long night in talk. The blue-glass paper weight with the horse and rider within, however, was uncertain what he wanted to companion. I tried him with the china horse and with the treeful of birds and with the duck in a boat, but somehow he would not group. While he was still hesitating, it came:—

“Bed-time, dear,” they said.

I faced them at last. I had often objected, but I had never reasoned it out.

“I’m not sleepy,” I announced serenely.

“But it’s bed-time,” they pressed it mildly.

“Bed-time is when you’re sleepy,” I explained. “I’m not sleepy. So it can’t be bed-time.”

“Bed-time is eight o’clock,” they said with a hint of firmness, and picked me up strongly and carried me off; and to my expostulation that the horse and his rider in the blue paper-weight would have nobody to talk to all night, they said that he wouldn’t care about that; and when I wept, they said I was cross, and that proved it was Bed-time.

There seemed no escape. But once—once I came near to understanding. Once the door into Unknown-about Things nearly opened for me, and just for a moment I caught a glimpse.

I had been told to tidy my top bureau drawer. I have always loathed tidying my top bureau drawer. It is so unlike a real task. It is made up of odds and ends of tasks that ought to have been despatched long ago and gradually, by process of throwing away, folding, putting in boxes, hanging up, and other utterly uninteresting operations. I can create a thing, I can destroy a thing, I can keep a thing as it was; but to face a top bureau drawer is none of these things. It is a motley task, unclassified, without honour, a very tag-end and bobtail of a task, fit for nobody.

I was thinking things that meant this, and hanging out the window. It was a gentle day, like a perfectly natural human being who wants to make friends and will not pretend one iota in order to be your friend. I remember that it was a still day, that I loved, not as I loved Uncle Linas and Aunt Frances, who always played with me and gave me things, but as I loved Mother and father when they took me somewhere with them, on Sunday afternoons.... I had a row of daffodils coming up in the garden. I began pretending that they were marching down the border, down the border, down the border to the big rock by the cooking-apple tree—why of course! I had never thought of it, but that rock was where they got their gold....

A house-wren came out of a niche in the porch and flew down to the platform in the boxalder, where father was accustomed to feed the birds. The platform was spread with muffin crumbs. The little wren ate, and flew to the clothes-line and poured forth his thankful exquisite song. I had always felt regret that we had no clothes reel that would whirl like a witch in the wind, but instead merely a system of clothes-lines, duly put up on Mondays; but the little wren evidently did not know the difference.

“Abracadabra, make me sing like that....” I told him. But I hadn’t said the right thing, and he flew away and left me not singing. I began thinking what if he had made me sing, and what if I had put back my head and gone downstairs singing like a wren, and gone to arithmetic class singing like a wren, and nobody could have stopped me, and nobody would have wanted to stop me....

... I leaned over the sill, holding both arms down and feeling the blood flow down and weight my fingers like a pulse. What if I should fall out the window and instead of striking the ground hard, as folk do when they fall out of windows, I should go softly through the earth, and feel it pressing back from my head and closing together behind my heels, and pretty soon I should come out, plump ... before the Root of Everything and sit there for a long time and watch it grow....

... I looked up at the blue, glad that I was so near to it, and thought how much pleasanter it would be to fly right away through the blue and see what colour it was lined with. Pink, maybe—rose-pink, which showed through at sunset when the sun leaped at last through the blue and it closed behind him. Rose-pink, like my best sash and hair-ribbons....

That brought me back. My best sash and hair-ribbons were in my top drawer. Moreover, there were foot-steps on the stairs and at the very door.

“Have you finished?” Mother asked.

I had not even opened the drawer.

“You have been up here one hour,” Mother said, and came and stood beside me. “What have you been doing?”

I began to tell her. I do not envy her her quandary. She knew that I was not to be too heavily chided and yet—the top drawers of this world must be tidied.

“Think!” she said. “That Hour has gone out the window without its work being done. And now this Hour, that was meant for play, has got to work. But not you! You’ve lost your turn. Now it’s Mother’s turn.”

She made me sit by the window while she tidied the drawer. I was not to touch it—I had lost my turn. While she worked, she talked to me about the things she knew I liked to talk about. But I could not listen. It is the only time in my life that I have ever really frantically wanted to tidy a top bureau drawer of anybody’s.

“Now,” she said when she had done, “this last Hour will meet the Hour-before-the-last, and each of them will look the way the other ought to have looked, and they will be all mixed up. And all day I think they will keep trying to come back to you to straighten them out. But you can’t do it. And they’ll have to be each other forever and ever and ever.”

She went away again, and I was left face to face with the very heart of this whole perplexing Time business: those two Hours that would always be somewhere trying to be each other, forever and ever, and always trying to come back for me to straighten them out.

Were there Hours out in the world that were sick hours, sick because we had treated them badly, and always trying to come back for folk to make them well?

And were there Hours that were busy and happy somewhere because they had been well used and they didn’t have to try to come back for us to patch them up?

Were Hours like that? Was Time like that?

When I told Delia of the incident, she at once characteristically settled it.

“Why, if they wasn’t any time,” she said, “we’d all just wait and wait and wait. They couldn’t have that. So they set something going to get us going to keep things going.”

Sometimes, in later life, when I have seen folk lunch because it is one o’clock, worship because it is the seventh day, go to Europe because it is Summer, and marry because it is high time, I wonder whether Delia was not right. Often and often I have been convinced that what Mother told me about the Hours trying to come back to get one to straighten them out is true with truth undying. And I wish, that morning by the window, and at those grim, inevitable Bed-times, that I, as I am now, might have told that Little Me this story about how, just possibly, they first noticed time and about what, just possibly, it is.

II
IN NO TIME

Before months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds were counted and named, consider how peculiar it all must have seemed. For example, when the Unknown-about Folk of those prehistoric times wished to know when a thing would happen, of course they can have had no word when, and no answer. If a little Prehistoric Girl gave a party, she cannot have known when to tell her guests to come, so she must have had to wait until the supper was ready and then invite them; and if they were not perfectly-bred little guests, they may have been offended because they hadn’t been invited before—only they would not have known how to say or to think “before,” so they cannot have been quite sure what they were offended at; but they may have been offended anyway, as happens now with that same kind of guest. And if a little Prehistoric Boy asked his father to bring him a new eagle or a new leopard for a pet, and his father came home night after night and didn’t bring it, the Prehistoric Boy could not say, “When will you bring it, sir?” because there was no when, so he may have asked a great many other questions, and been told to sit in the back of the cave until he could do better. Nobody can have known how long to boil eggs or to bake bread, and people must have had to come to breakfast and just sit and wait and wait until things were done. Worst of all, nobody can have known that time is a thing to use and not to waste. Since they could not measure it, they could not of course tell how fast it was slipping away, and they must have thought that time was theirs to do with what they pleased, instead of turning it all into different things—this piece into sleep, this piece into play, this piece into tasks and exercise and fun. Just as, in those days, they probably thought that food is to be eaten because it tastes good and not because it makes the body grow, so they thought that time was a thing to be thrown away and not to be used, every bit—which is, of course, a prehistoric way to think. And nobody can have known about birthdays, and no story can have started “Once upon a time,” and everything must have been quite different.

About then,—only of course they didn’t know it was then—a Prehistoric Mother said one morning to her Prehistoric Little Daughter:—

“Now, Vertebrata, get your practising done and then you may go to play.” (It wasn’t a piano and it wasn’t an organ, but it was a lovely, reedy, blow-on-it thing, like a pastoral pipe, and little girls always sat about on rocks in the landscape, as soon as they had had their breakfasts, and practised.)

So Vertebrata took her reed pipes and sat on a rock in the landscape and practised—all of what we now know (but she did not know) would be five minutes. Then she came in the cave, and tossed the pipes on her bed of skins, and then remembered and hung them in their place above the fireplace, and turned toward the doorway. But her mother, who was roasting flesh at the fire, called her back.

“Vertebrata,” she said, “did I not tell you to practise?”

“I did practise,” said Vertebrata.

“Then practise and practise,” said her mother, not knowing how else to tell her to do her whole hour. Her mother didn’t know hours, but she knew by the feel of her feelings when Vertebrata had done enough.

So Vertebrata sat on a rock and did five minutes more, and came and threw her pipes on her bed of skins, and remembered and hung them up, and then turned toward the door of the cave. But her mother looked up from the flesh-pot and called her back again.

“Vertebrata,” she said, “do you want mother to have to speak to you again?”

“No, indeed, muvver,” said her little daughter.

“Then practise and practise and practise,” said her mother. “If you can’t play when you grow up, what will people think?”

So Vertebrata went back to her landscape rock, and this thing was repeated until Vertebrata had practised what we now know (but she did not know) to have been a whole hour. And you can easily see that in order to bring this about, what her mother must have said to her the last time of all was this:—

“I want you to practise and practise and practise and practise and practise and practise and practise and practise and practise and practise and practise and practise—” or something almost as long.

Now of course it was very hard for her mother to say all this besides roasting the flesh and tidying the cave, so she made up her mind that when her Prehistoric Husband came home, he must be told about it. And when the sun was at the top of the sky and cast no shadow, and the flesh was roasted brown and fragrant, she dressed it with pungent herbs, and raked the vegetables out of the ashes and hid the dessert in the cool wall of the cave—that was a surprise—and spread the flat rock at the door of the cave and put vine-leaves in her hair and, with Vertebrata, set herself to wait.

There went by what we now know to have been noon, and another hour, and more hours, and all afternoon, and all early twilight, and still her Prehistoric Husband did not come home to dinner. Vertebrata was crying with hunger, and the flesh and the vegetables were ice-cold, and the Prehistoric Wife and Mother sat looking straight before her without smiling. And then, just as the moon was rising red over the soft breast of the distant wood, the Prehistoric Father appeared, not looking as if he had done anything.

“Is dinner ready?” he asked pleasantly.

Now this was the last straw, and the Prehistoric Wife and Mother said so, standing at the door of the cave, with Vertebrata crying in the offing.

“Troglodyte,” she said sadly (that was what she called him), “dinner has been ready and ready and ready and ready and ready and ready and ready ...” and she showed him the ice-cold roasted flesh and vegetables.

“I’m so sorry, dearest. I never knew,” said the Troglodyte, contritely, and did everything in the world that he could do to show her how sorry he was. He made haste to open his game-bag, and he drew out what food he had killed, and showed her a soft, cock-of-the-rock skin for a cap for her and a white ptarmigan breast to trim it with, and at last she said—because nobody can stay offended when the offender is sorry:—

“Well, dear, say no more about it. We’ll slice up the meat and it will do very well cold, and I’ll warm up the potatoes with some brown butter (or the like). But hurry and bathe or I’ll be ready first again.”

So he hurried and bathed in the brook, and the cave smelled savoury of the hot brown butter, and Vertebrata had a Grogan tail stuck in her hair, and presently they sat down to supper. And it was nearly eight o’clock, but they didn’t know anything about that.

When the serious part of supper was done, and the dessert that was a surprise had been brought and had surprised and gone, Vertebrata’s mother sat up very straight and looked before her without smiling. And she said:—

“Now, something must be done.”

“About what, Leaf Butterfly?” her husband asked.

“Vertebrata doesn’t practise enough and you don’t come home to dinner enough,” she answered, “and something must be done.”

“I did practise—wunst,” said Vertebrata.

“But you should practise once and once and once and once and once and once, and so on, and not have to be told each once,” said her mother.

“I did come home to dinner,” said the Prehistoric Husband, waving his hand at his empty platter.

“But you should come first and first and first and first and first, and so on, and not let the dinner get ice-cold,” said his wife. “Hear a thing,” said she.

She sprinkled some salt all thick on the table and took the stick on which the flesh had been roasted, and in the salt she drew a circle.

“This,” she said, “is the sky. And this place, at the top, is the top of the sky. And when the sun is at the top of the sky and there is no shadow, I will have ready the dinner, hot and sweet in the pot, and dessert—for a surprise. And when the sun is at the top of the sky and there is no shadow, do you come to eat it, always. That will be dinner.”

“That is well,” said the Troglodyte, like a true knight—for in those first days even true knights were willing that women should cook and cave-tidy for them all day long and do little else. But that was long ago and we must forgive it.

Then she made a mark in the salt at the edge of the circle a little way around from the first mark.

“When the sun is at the edge of the sky and all red, and the shadows are long, and the dark is coming, I will have ready berries and nuts and green stuffs and sweet syrups and other things that I shall think of—for you. And when the sun is at the edge of the sky and all red, and the shadows are long, and the dark is coming, do you hurry to us, always. That will be supper.”

“That is well,” said the Troglodyte, like a true knight.

Then she drew the stick a long way round.

“This is sleep,” she said. “This place here is waking, and breakfast. And then next the sun will be at the top of the sky again. And we will have dinner in the same fashion. And this is right for you. But what to do with the child I don’t know, unless I keep her practising from the time the sun is at the top of the sky until it is at the bottom. For if she can’t play when she grows up, what will people think?”

Now, while she said this, the Prehistoric Woman had been sitting with the stick on which the flesh had been roasted held straight up in her fingers, resting in the middle of the ring which she had made in the salt. And by now the moon was high and white in the sky. And the Man saw that the moon-shadow of the stick fell on the circle from its centre to beyond its edge. And presently he stretched out his hand and took the stick from her, and held it so and sat very still, thinking, thinking, thinking....

“Faddie,” said Vertebrata—she called him that for loving—“Faddie, will you make me a little bow and arrow and scrape ’em white?”

But her father did not hear her, and instead of answering he sprang up and began drawing on the soft earth before the cave a deep, deep circle, and he ran for the long stick that had carried his game-bag over his shoulder, and in the middle of the earth circle he set the stick.

“Watch a thing!” he cried.

Vertebrata and her mother, understanding little but trusting much, sat by his side. And together in the hot, white night the three watched the shadow of the stick travel on the dial that they had made. Of course there was no such thing as bed-time then, and Vertebrata usually sat up until she fell over asleep, when her mother carried her off to her little bed of skins; but this night she was so excited that she didn’t fall over. For the stick-shadow moved like a finger; like, indeed, a living thing that had been in the world all the time without their knowing. And they watched it while it went a long way round the circle. Then her mother said, “Nonsense, Vertebrata, you must be sleepy now whether you know it or not,” and she put her to bed, Vertebrata saying all the way that she was wide awake, just like in the daytime. And when her mother went back outside the cave, the Man looked up at her wonderfully.

“Trachystomata,” said he (which is to say “siren”), “if the sun-shadow will do the same thing as the moon-shadow, we have found a way to make Vertebrata practise enough.”

In the morning when Vertebrata came out of the cave—she woke alone and dressed alone, just like being grown-up—she found her mother and her father down on their hands and knees, studying the circle in the soft earth and the long sun-shadow of the stick. And her mother called her and she went running to her. And her mother said:—

“Now we will have breakfast, dear, and then you get your pipes and come here and practise. And when you begin, we will lay a piece of bone where the shadow stands, and when I feel the feeling of enough, I will tell you, and you will stop practising, and we will lay another piece of bone on that shadow. And after this you will always practise from one bone to another, forever.”

Vertebrata could hardly wait to have breakfast before she tried it, and then she ran and brought her pipes and sat down beside the circle. And her father did not go to his hunting, or her mother to her cooking and cave-tidying, but they both sat there with Vertebrata, hearing her pipe and watching the shadow finger move, and waiting till her mother should feel the feeling of enough.

Now! Since the world began, the Hours, Minutes, and Seconds had been hanging over it, waiting patiently until people should understand about them. But nobody before had ever, ever thought about them, and Vertebrata and her mother and her father were the very first ones who had even begun to understand.

So it chanced that in the second that Vertebrata began to pipe and the bone was laid on the circle, that Second (deep in the air and yet as near as time is to us) knew that it was being marked off at last on the soft circle of the earth, and so did the next Second, and the next, and the next, and the next, until sixty of them knew—and there was the first Minute, measured in the circle before the cave. And other Minutes knew what was happening, and they all came hurrying likewise, and they filled the air with exquisite, invisible presences—all to the soft sound of little Vertebrata’s piping. And she piped, and piped, on the lovely, reedy, blow-on-it instrument, and she made sweet music. And for the first time in her little life, her practising became to her not merely practising, but music-making—there, while she watched the strange Time-shadow move.

“J—o—y!” cried the Seconds, talking among themselves. “People are beginning to know about us. It is time that they should.”

“Ah!” they cried again. “We can go faster than anything.”

“Think of all of our poor brothers and sisters that have gone, without anybody knowing they were here,” they mourned.

“Pipe, pipe, pipe,” went Vertebrata, and the little Seconds danced by almost as if she were making them with her piping.

The Minutes, too, said things to one another—who knows if Time is so silent as we imagine? May not all sorts of delicate conversations go on in the heart of time about which we never know anything—Second talking with Second, and Minute answering to Minute; and the grave Hours, listening to everything we say and seeing everything we do, confiding things to the Day about us and about Eternity from which they have come. I cannot tell you what they say about you—you will know that, if you try to think, and especially if you stand close to a great clock or hear it boom out in the night. And I cannot tell you what they say about Eternity. But I think that this may be one of the songs that they sing:—

SONG OF THE MINUTES

We are a garland for men,

We are flung from the first gate of Time,

From the touch that opened the minds of men

Down to the breath of this rhyme.

We are the measure of things,

The rule of their sweep and stir,

But whenever a little girl pipes and sings,

We will keep time for her.

We are a touching of hands

From those in the murk of the earth,

Through all who have garnered life in their hands

And wrought it from death unto birth.

We are the measure of things,

The rule of their stir and sweep,

And wherever a little child weeps or sings

It is his soul we keep.

At last, when sixty Minutes had danced and chorussed past, there was, of course, the first rosy Hour ever to have her coming and passing marked since earth began. And when the Hour was gone, Vertebrata’s mother felt the feeling of enough, and she said to Vertebrata:—

“That will do, dear. Now you may go and play.”

That was the first exact hour’s practising that ever any little girl did by any sort of clock.

“Ribbon-fish mine,” said the Prehistoric Man to his wife, when Vertebrata had finished, “I have been thinking additional thoughts. Why could we not use the circle in other ways?”

“What ways, besides for your coming home and for Vertebrata’s practising?” asked the Prehistoric Woman; but we must forgive her for knowing about only those two things, for she was a very Prehistoric Woman indeed.

“Little bones might be laid between the big bones,” said the Man—and by that of course he meant measuring off minutes. “By certain of them you could roast flesh and not kneel continually beside the fire. By certain of them you could boil eggs, make meet the cakes, and not be in peril of burning the beans. Also....”

He was silent for a moment, looking away over the soft breast of the wood where the sun was shining its utmost, because it has so many reasons.

“When I look at that moving finger on the circle thing,” he said slowly, “it feels as if whoever made the sun were saying things to me, but with no words. For his sun moves, and the finger on the circle thing moves with it—as if it were telling us how long to do this thing, and how long to do that thing—you and me and Vertebrata. And we must use every space between the bones—and whoever made the sun is telling us this, but with no words.”

The Prehistoric Woman looked up at her husband wonderfully.

“You are a great man, Troglodyte!” she told him.

At which he went away to hunt, feeling for the first time in his prehistoric life as if there were a big reason, somewhere out in the air, why he should get as much done as he could. And the Prehistoric Woman went at her baking and cave-tidying, but always she ran to the door of the cave to look at the circle thing, as if it bore a great message for her to make haste, a message with no words.

As for Vertebrata, she had taken her pipes and danced away where, on rocks in the landscape, the other little Prehistorics sat about, getting their practising done. She tried to tell them all about the circle thing, waving her pipes and jumping up and down to make them understand, and drawing circles and trying to play to them about it on her pipes; and at last they understood a little, like understanding a new game, and they joined her and piped on their rocks all over the green, green place. And the Seconds and Minutes and Hours, being fairly started to be measured, all came trooping on, to the sound of the children’s piping.

When the sun was at the top of the sky, Vertebrata remembered, and she stuck a stick in the ground and saw that there was almost no shadow. So she left the other children and ran very hard toward her own cave. And when she had nearly reached it, somebody overtook her, also running very hard.

Sat on a rock in the landscape and practised.

“Faddie!” she called, as she called when she meant loving—and he swung her up on his shoulder and ran on with her. And they burst into the open space before the cave just as the shadow-stick pointed straight to the top of the circle thing.

There, before the door of the cave, was the flat rock, all set with hot baked meat and toothsome piles of roast vegetables and beans that were not burned. And the Prehistoric Woman, with vine-leaves in her hair, was looking straight before her and smiling. And that was the first dinner of the world that was ever served on time, and since that day, to be late for dinner is one of the things which nobody may do; and perhaps in memory of the Prehistoric Woman, when this occurs, the politest ladies may always look straight before them without smiling.

“Is dinner ready, Sea Anemone?” asked the Man.

“On the bone,” replied his wife, pleasantly.

“What’s for ’sert?” asked Vertebrata.

“It’s a surprise,” said her mother—which is always the proper answer to that question.

And while they sat there, the Days and Weeks and Months and Years were coming toward them, faster than anything, to be marked off on the circle thing before the door, and to be used. And they are coming yet, like a message—but with no words.

III
ONE FOR THE MONEY

We were burying snow. Calista Waters had told us about it, when, late in April, snow was found under a pile of wood in our yard. We wondered why we had never thought of it before when snow was plentiful. We had two long tins which had once contained ginger wafers. These were to be packed with snow, fastened tight as to covers, and laid deep in the earth at a distance which, by means of spoons and hot water, we were now fast approaching.

It was Spring-in-earnest. The sun was warm, robins were running on the grass, already faintly greened where the snow had but just melted; a clear little stream flowed down the garden path and out under the cross-walk. The Wells’s barn-doors stood open, somebody was beating a carpet, there was a hint of bonfire smoke in the air, there were little stirrings and sounds that belonged to Spring as the gasoline wood-cutter belonged to Fall.

Calista was talking.

“And then,” she said, “some hot Summer day, when they’re all sitting out on the lawn in the shade, with thin dresses and palm-leaf fans, we’ll come and dig it up, and carry ’em big plates of feathery white snow, with a spoon stuck in.”

We were silent, picturing their delight.

“Miss Messmore says,” I ventured, not without hesitation, “that snow is all bugs.”

In fact all of us had been warned without ceasing not to eat snow—but there were certain spots where it was beyond human power to resist it: Mr. Britt’s fence, for instance, on whose pickets little squares of snow rested, which, eaten off by direct application of the lips, produced a slight illusion of partaking of caramels.

Delia stopped digging. “Maybe they won’t eat it when we bring it to them in Summer?” she suggested.

“Then we will,” said Calista, promptly. Of course they would not have the heart to forbid us to eat it in, say, June.

About a foot down in the ground we set the two tins side by side in an aperture lined and packed with snow and filled in with earth. Over it we made a mound of all the snow we could find in the garden. Then we adjourned to the woodshed and sat on the sill and the sawbuck and the work-bench.

“What makes us give it away?” said Delia Dart, abruptly. “Why don’t we sell it? We’d ought to get fifteen cents a dish for it by June.”

We began a calculation, as rapid as might be. Each tin would hold at least six dishes.

“Why didn’t we bury more?” said Calista, raptly. “Why didn’t we bury a tubful?”

“It’d be an awful job to dig the hole,” I objected. “Besides, they’d miss the tub.”

The latter objection was insurmountable, so we went off to the garden to hunt pig-nuts. A tree of these delicacies grew in the midst of the potato patch, and some of the nuts were sure to have lain winter-long in the earth and to be seasoned and edible.

“Let’s all ask to go to the Rodmans’ this afternoon and tell Margaret Amelia and Betty about the snow,” Calista suggested.

“I can’t,” I said. “I’ve got to go calling.”

They regarded me pityingly.

“Can’t you come over there afterwards?” they suggested.

This, I knew, was useless. We should not start calling till late. Besides, I should be hopelessly dressed up.

“Well,” said Delia, soothingly, “we’ll go anyhow. Are you going to call where there’s children?”

“I don’t think so,” I said, darkly. “We never do.”

That afternoon was one whose warm air was almost thickened by sun. The maple buds were just widening into little curly leaves; shadows were beginning to show; and everywhere was that faint ripple of running water in which Spring speaks. But then there was I, in my best dress, my best coat, my best shoes, my new hat, and gloves, faring forth to make calls.

This meant merely that there were houses where dwelt certain Grown-ups who expected me to be brought periodically to see them, an expectation persevered in, I believe, solely as a courtesy to my family. Twice a year, therefore, we set out; and the days selected were, as this one, invariably the crown and glory of all days: Days meet for cleaning out the play-house, for occupying homes scraped with a shingle in the softened soil, for assisting at bonfires, to say nothing of all that was to be done in damming up the streams of the curbs and turning aside the courses of rivers.

The first call was on Aunt Hoyt—no true aunt, of course, but “aunt” by mutual compliment. She lived in a tiny house on Conant Street, set close to the sidewalk and shaded by an enormous mulberry tree. I sought out my usual seat, a little hardwood stool to whose top was neatly tacked a square of Brussels carpeting and whose cover, on being lifted, revealed a boot-jack, a shoe-brush, and a round box of blacking. The legs were deeply notched, and I amused myself by fitting my feet in the notches and occasionally coming inadvertently back to the floor with an echoing bump.

Now and then Aunt Hoyt, who was little and wrinkled, and whose glasses had double lenses in the middle so that I could not keep my eyes from them when she spoke, would turn to address an observation at me.

“How long her hair is! Do you think it is quite healthy for her to have such long hair? I’ll warrant you don’t like to have it combed, do you, dear?”

If Aunt Hoyt had only known the depth of the boredom with which I had this inane question put to me! It was one of the wonders of my days: the utterly absurd questions that grown-up people could ask.

For example: “How do you do to-day?” What had any reasonable child to answer to that? Of course one was well. If one wasn’t, one would be kept at home. If one wasn’t, one wasn’t going to tell anyway. Or, “What’s she been doing lately?” Well! Was one likely to reply: “Burying snow. Hunting pig-nuts. Digging up pebbles from under the eaves. Making a secret play-house in the currant bushes that nobody knows about?” And unless one did thus tell one’s inmost secrets, what was there left to say? And if one kept a dignified silence, one was sulky!

“She’s a good little girl, I’m sure. Is she much help to you?” Aunt Hoyt asked that day, and patted my hair as we took leave. Dear Aunt Hoyt, I know now that she was lonesome and longed for children and, like many another, had no idea how to treat them, save by making little conversational dabs at them.

Then there was Aunt Arthur, who lived in a square brick house that always smelled cool. At her house I invariably sat on a Brussels “kick-about” in the bay window and looked at a big leather “Wonders of Earth and Sea,” with illustrations. Sometimes she let me examine a basket of shells that she herself had gathered at the beach—I used to look at her hands and at her big, flat cameo ring and marvel that they had been so near to the ocean. Once or twice, when I wriggled too outrageously, she would let me go into the large, dim parlour, with its ostrich egg hanging from the chandelier and the stuffed blackbird under an oval glass case before the high mirror, and the coral piled under the centre-table and the huge, gilt-framed landscape which she herself had painted. But this day, between the lace curtains hanging from their cornices, I caught sight of Calista and Delia racing up the hill to the Rodmans, and the entire parlour was, so to say, poisoned. In desperation I went back and asked for a drink of water—my ancient recourse when things got too bad.

Aunt Barker’s was better—there was a baby there. But that day ill-luck went before me, for he was asleep and they refused to let me look at him, because they said that woke him up. I disbelieved this, because I saw no reason in it, and nobody gave me a reason. I resolved to try it out the first time I was alone with a sleeping baby. I begged boldly to go outdoors, and Mother would have consented, but Aunt Barker said that a man was painting the lattice and that I would in every probability lean against the lattice, or brush the paint pots, or try to get a drink at the pump, which, I gathered, splashed everybody for miles around. So I sat in a patent rocker, and the only rift in a world of black cloud was that, by rocking far enough, the patent rocker could be made to give forth a wholly delectable squeak. Of course fate swiftly descended; I was bidden discontinue the squeak, and nothing remained to me.

Then we went to Grandma Bard’s. I did not in the least know why, but the little rag-carpeted sitting-room, the singing kettle on the back of the coal stove, the scarlet geraniums on the window, the fascinating picture on the clock door, all entertained me at once. Grandma Bard wore a black lace cap, and she bade me sit by her and instantly gave me a peppermint drop from the pocket of her black sateen apron. She asked me no questions, but while she talked with Mother, she laid together two rose-coloured—rose-coloured!—bits of her patchwork and quietly handed them to me to baste—none of your close stitches, only basting! Then she folded a newspaper and asked me to cut it and scallop it for her cupboard shelf. Then she found a handful of hickory nuts and brought me the tack-hammer and a flat-iron....

“Oh, Mother, let’s not go yet,” I heard myself saying.

Going home—a delicate business, because stepping on any crack meant being poisoned forthwith—I tried to think it out: What was it that Mother and Grandma Bard knew that the rest didn’t know? I gave it up. All I could think of was that they seemed to know me.

“Isn’t Grandma Bard just grand?” I observed fervently.

“I’m afraid,” Mother said thoughtfully, “that sometimes she has rather a hard time to get on.”

I was still turning this in my mind as we passed the wood yard. The wood yard was a series of vacant lots where some mysterious person piled cords and cords of wood, which smelled sweet and green and gave out cool breaths. Sometimes the gasoline wood-cutter worked in there, and we would watch till it had gone, and then steal in and bring away a baking-powder can full of sawdust. We never knew quite what to do with this sawdust. It was not desirable for mud-pies, and there was nothing that we knew of to be stuffed with it. Yet when we could, we always saved it. Perhaps it gave us an excuse to go into the wood yard, at which we always peeped as we went by. This day, I lagged a few steps behind and looked in, expectant of the same vague thing that we always expected, and never defined—a bonfire, a robber, an open cave, some changed aspect, I did not know what. And over by the sawdust pile, I saw, stepping about, a little girl in a reddish dress—a little girl whom I had never seen before. She looked up and saw me stand staring at her; and her gaze was so clear and direct that I felt obliged to say something in defence of my intrusion.

“Hello,” I said.

Her face suddenly brightened. “Hello,” she replied, and after a moment she added: “I thought you was going to say ‘how de do.’”

A faint spark of understanding leapt between us. Dressed-up little girls usually did say “how de do.” It was only in a kind of unconscious deference to her own appearance that I had not done so. She was unkempt and ragged—her sleeve was torn from cuff to elbow.

“What you doing here?” I inquired, not averse to breaking the business of calling by a bit of gossip.

At this she did for the third time what I had been vaguely conscious of her having done: She glanced over her shoulder toward a corner of the yard which the piled wood concealed from me. I stepped forward and looked there.

On an end of wood-pile which we children had pulled down so as to make a slope to ascend its heights, a man was sitting. His head and shoulders were drooping, his legs were relaxed, and his hands were hanging loose, as if they were heavy. His eyes were closed and his lips were parted, yet about the face, with its fair hair and beard, there was something singularly attractive and gentle. He looked like a man who would tell you a story.

“Who’s he?” I asked, and involuntarily I whispered.

The girl began backing a little away from me, her eyes on my face, her finger on her lips.

“It’s my father,” she said. “He’s—resting.”

I had never heard of a man resting in the daytime. Save, perhaps, on Sunday afternoons, this was no true function of men. I longed to look at the man and understand better, but something in the little girl’s manner forbade me. I looked perplexedly after her. Then I peered round the fence post and saw my Mother standing under a tree, waiting for me. She beckoned. I took one more look inside the fence, and I saw the little girl sit down beside the sleeping man and fold her hands. The afternoon sun smote across the long wood yard, with its mysterious rooms made by the piling of the cords. It seemed impossible that this strange, still place, with its thick carpet of sawdust and its moist odours, should belong at all to the commonplace little street. And the two strange occupants gave the last touch to its enchantment.

I ran to overtake Mother, and I tried to tell her something of what I had seen. But some way my words gave nothing of the air of the place and of the two who waited there for something that I could not guess. Already I knew this about words—that they were all very well for saying a thing, but seldom for letting anybody taste what you were talking about.

I did not give up trying to tell it until we passed the Rodmans’. From the direction of their high-board fence I heard voices. Margaret Amelia and Betty and Delia and Calista were engaged in writing on the weathered boards of the fence with willows dipped in the clear-flowing gutter stream.

“Got it done?” I called mysteriously.

They turned, shaking their heads.

“It was all melted,” they replied. “We couldn’t find another bit.”

“Oh, well,” I cried, “you come on over after supper. I’ve got something to tell you.”

“Something to tell you” would, of course, bring anybody anywhere. After supper they all came “over.” It was that hour which only village children know—that last bright daylight of slanting sun and driven cows tinkling homeward; of front-doors standing open and neighbours calling to one another across the streets, and the sky warm in the quiet surface of some little water from whose bridge lads are tossing stones or hanging bare-footed from the timbers. We withdrew past the family, sitting on the side-porch, to the garden, where the sun was still golden on the tops of the maples.

“Mother says,” I began importantly, “that she thinks Grandma Bard has a hard time to get along. Well, you know our snow? Well, you know you said you couldn’t find any more to bury? Well, why don’t we dig up ours, right now, and sell it and give the money to Grandma Bard?”

I must have touched some answering chord. Looking back, I cannot believe that this was wholly Grandma Bard. Could it be that the others had wanted to dig it up, independent of my suggestion? For there was not one dissenting voice.

The occasion seemed to warrant the best dishes. I brought out six china plates and six spoons. These would be used for serving my own family, while the others took the two cans and ran home with them to their families.

We dug rapidly now, the earth being still soft. To our surprise, the tops of the tins were located much nearer to the surface than we had supposed after our efforts of the morning to reach a great depth. The snow in which we had packed the cans had disappeared, but we made nothing of that. We drew out the cans, had off their tops, and gazed distressfully down into clear water.

“It went and melted!” said Calista, resentfully.

In a way, she regarded it as her personal failure, since the ceremony had been her suggestion in the first place.

“Never mind, Calista,” we said, “you didn’t know.”

Calista freely summed up her impressions.

“How mean!” she said.

We gravely gathered up the china plates and turned toward the house—and now I was possessed of a really accountable desire to get the plates back in their places as quickly as possible.

On the way a thought struck us simultaneously. Poor Grandma Bard!

“Let’s all go to see her to-morrow anyhow,” I suggested—largely, I am afraid, because the memory of my entertainment there was still fresh in my mind.

When, after a little while, we came round the house where the older ones were sitting, and heard them discussing uninteresting affairs, we regarded them with real sympathy. They had so narrowly missed something so vastly, absorbingly interesting.

From Delia’s room a voice came calling as, at intervals, other voices were heard calling other names throughout the neighbourhood—they were at one with the tinkle of the bells and the far-off yodel of the boys.

“Delia!”