That afternoon we did almost all these forbidden things—swings and seesaws and rings would have done exactly as well, only these had not been provided—and then we went to rest in the band-stand. Mary Elizabeth and I were feeling somewhat subdued—neither of us shone much in feats of skill, and here Delia and Margaret Amelia easily put us in our proper places. Calista was not daring, but she was a swift runner, and this entitled her to respect. Mary Elizabeth and I were usually the first ones caught, and the others were not above explaining to us frankly that this was why we preferred to play Pretend.
“Let’s tell a story—you start it, Mary Elizabeth,” I proposed, anxious for us two to return to standing, for in collaborations of this kind Mary Elizabeth and I frankly shone—and the wish to shine, like the wish to cry out, is among the primitive phases of individual growth.
“Let Margaret Amelia start it,” Delia tried to say, but already the story was started, Mary Elizabeth leaning far back, and beginning to braid and unbraid her long hair—not right away to the top of the braid, which was a serious matter and not to be lightly attempted with heavy hair, but just near the curling end.
“Once,” she said, “a big gold sun was going along up in the sky, wondering what in the world—no, what in All-of-it to do with himself. For he was all made and done, nice and bright and shiny, and he wanted a place to be. So he knocked at all the worlds and said, ‘Don’t you want to hire a sun to do your urrants, take care of your garden, and behave like a fire and like a lamp?’ But all the worlds didn’t want him, because they all had engaged a sun first and they could only use one apiece, account of the climate. So one morning—he knew it was morning because he was shining, and when it was night he never shone—one morning....”
“Now leave somebody else,” Delia suggested restlessly. “Leave Margaret Amelia tell.”
So we turned to her. Margaret Amelia considered solemnly—perhaps it was her faculty for gravity that made us always look up to her—and took up the tale:
“One morning he met a witch. And he said, ‘Witch, I wish you would—would give me something to eat. I’m very hungry.’ So the witch took him to her kitchen and gave him a bowl of porridge, and it was hot and burned his mouth, and he asked for a drink of water, and—and—”
“What was the use of having her a witch if that was all he was going to ask her?” demanded Mary Elizabeth.
“They always have witches in the best stories,” Margaret Amelia contended, “and anyway, that’s all I’m going to tell.”
Delia took up the tale uninvited.