“Fine day of it,” he commented and went on. He always sighed a little when he spoke, not in sorrow; but in a certain weariness.
In forty-two years I should be as old as that. Forty-two years—more than five life-times, as I knew them.
I was still looking after him, trying to think it through—a number as vast as the sky of stars was vast—when round the corner, across the street, the Rodman girls appeared. (“Margaret and Betty Rodman?” my mother used to inquire pointedly when I said “the Rodman girls.”) In their wake was their little brother, Harold. I hailed them joyously.
“Come on over! It’s house-cleaning.”
“We were,” admitted Betty, as they ran. “We saw the things out in the yard, and we asked right off. We can stay a whole hour.”
“Can’t we get Mary Gilbraith to tell us when it’s an hour?” Margaret Amelia suggested as they came in at the gate. “Then we won’t have to remember.”
Mary Gilbraith stood beating a curtain, and we called to her. She nodded her head, wound in a brown veil.
“Sure,” she said. “And don’t you children track up them clean floors inside there.”
I glanced over my shoulder into the empty room.
“Shall I get down,” I inquired of my guests, “or will you get up?”