There was a loud puffing. Bunny’s blast, a little too late, blew a fragrant waver of smoke into his face.
“Did you wish?”
“Yes,” said Martin, “I——”
“You mustn’t tell it! If you tell, it won’t come true.”
But he hadn’t wished, yet. He wanted to wait a moment, to get it just right. As the children turned away, trooping toward the door, Martin made one hasty movement that no one saw. With a quick slice of the sharp cake-knife he cut off the tail of the plush mouse. Now it would always serve to remind him of the tailless mice in the room that was no longer a nursery. Then, with the snuff of smoking candles still in his nose, he wished.
II
“DEAR MISS CLYDE,” wrote Mrs. Granville, “it will be so nice to meet you again after all these years. You can imagine my surprise when I found that the house Mr. Granville has taken for the summer is the old Richmond place, which I remember so well from long ago. Twenty-one years, isn’t it? It hasn’t changed a bit, but everything seems so much smaller, even the ocean somehow. The house has been shut up a long time, since the summer the Richmonds went away. We want you to join our Family Picnic, which is always an amusing affair. Mr. Granville admires your work so much, I did not realize until recently that you must be the same person I knew as a child. There are other artists here too, the Island has become quite a summer camp for painters, the woods are full of them, painting away merrily. I am sorry this is so late, but just send us a wire saying you can come....”
She paused to reread the letter, and changed “so nice,” in the first line, to “nice.” She changed “twenty-one” to “nearly twenty.” She crossed out “painting away merrily.” How do I know whether they’re merry? she asked herself. Then she noticed that the word “summer” was used three times. She changed one of them to “year.” No, that made three “years.” Put “for the vacation” instead of “for the summer.” Now the letter must be copied again.
Why on earth George wanted her to invite the Clyde creature when things were complicated enough already ... she had never cared much for her even as a child ... to have outsiders here for the Picnic when they had only just got the old house in running order, and Lizzie was overworked in the kitchen, and expenses terrific anyhow ... George thought Miss Clyde might be the right person to do the pictures for the booklet he was writing for the railroad company. Always thinking of his business first and her convenience afterward. Business was something to be attended to in offices, not to be mixed up with your home life. Never try to make social friends of your business acquaintances, how many times had she told George that?
Damn the Picnic, damn the Picnic, damn the Picnic!