“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?”