I
"Tell Letty, Muvver. Tell Letty."
"Again? Oh, Letty!" Catherine opened her eyes. Letty, on her stomach, was pointing at a black ant slipping along a grass blade.
"'Nother ant. Tell Letty."
"Don't squirm off the rug, or the ant will crawl up your rompers and take a nip." Catherine looked up through the motionless leaves of the birch trees under which she had spread the rug. "Once there was a busy ant," she began, "and he went out for a walk to find a grain of sand to build his house. His brother went out for a walk, too——" Her thoughts drifted through the story: how close the sky looks, as if the heat had changed its shape, and it rested there just above the tree—— "The busy ant found a grain of sand and ran back to his hill to lay it on his house." The haze seems thicker; the forest fires must be worse, no rain forever——
"Uh-h," Letty grunted, and held up her small brown hand, the ant a black smear on her palm.
"Why, Letty!" Catherine pulled herself up on one elbow. "You squashed him!"
"Bad ant. Nip Letty."
Catherine reached for Letty's fist just as a pink tongue touched it.