We stared at one another. This was incredible. Margaret Amelia and Betty had just come. We had hardly tasted what the morning might have held. Our place of business was only at this moment ready for us. We had just meant to begin.
There was no appeal. We went down the garden path for Harold. He sat where we had left him, somewhat drowsy in the warm sun, patting an enormous mound of moist earth. Busy with our own wrongs, we picked him up and stood him on his feet without warning him. An indignant roar broke from him.
“Just goin’ frost my meat pie!” he wailed. “Wiv chocolate on!”
Some stirring of pity for our common plight may have animated us—I do not remember. But he was hurried off. I went with them to the fence, gave them last tag as became an hostess, stood on the gate as it swung shut, experienced the fine jar and bang of its closing, and then hung wistfully across it, looking for the unknown.
The elm and maple shadows moved pleasantly on the cream-coloured brick walk whose depths of tone were more uneven than the shadows. An oriole was calling, hanging back downward from a little bough. Somebody’s dog came by, looked up at me, wagged his tail, and hurried on about his business. Looking after him, I saw Mr. Britt coming slowly home with his mail. At our gate he stopped.
“Playing something?” he inquired.
Welcoming any sympathy, I told him how we had just got ready to play when it was time to stop. He nodded with some unexpected understanding, closing his eyes briefly.
“That’s it,” he said. “We all just get ready when it’s time to stop. Fine day of it,” he added, and sighed and went on.
I stared after him. Could it be possible that his life had not seemed long to him? That he felt as if he had hardly begun? I dismissed this as utterly improbable. Fifty years!