Suddenly Mollie began to laugh. It had come in
a flash—the long chair, the bandaged foot
on a foot-rest, the watch with its back open, the
tattooed anchor and rope on a lean wrist, and above
all a pair of dark eyes (so like Dick’s) crinkled
up in a kindly smile: “You don’t
blow hard enough, little Polly,” someone was
saying, “try again.” The hair above
the dark eyes was white, but Mollie knew.
“It’s so funny,” she cried,
as they all looked at her, Prudence anxiously inquiring
if she had “got it again”. “I’m
all right, Prue, but it’s so funny. I
know who you are,” she laughed again, turning
to Mr. Smith. “Your name isn’t John
Smith at all. You are poor dear Richard.
Who was so active. With the gout. And you
are—you are my—”
“Hush, Mollie!” said Prue.
* * * *
*
Mollie sat up. She was still laughing. Aunt
Mary stood beside her in hat and coat, her hands full
of cardboard boxes from Buszard’s. Grannie
sat at the tea-table, and opposite her was old Mrs.
Pell, who had put on her bonnet because it would soon
be time for her to go. They all looked at Mollie,
who continued to laugh.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “It
is only a fit of giggles. I have them sometimes.”
“Give the dear child her tea, Mary,” said
Grannie. “Her nerves are a little highly
strung; her grandfather used to laugh just like that—
poor dear Richard!”
The Aeronauts or The Fateful Stone
“Aunt Mary, how old is Time?” asked Mollie.
She was resting on her sofa in the garden, after her
first attempt at a short walk. She had been wondering
how her young grandpapa had got on with his sprained
ankle, and longed to ask questions about him, but
dared not venture even on the simplest. It was
so easy to forget and ask too much. The day was
rather hot, and the couch had been drawn into the
shade of a great copper-beech. Mollie lay on her
back, gazing up through the silky red foliage at the
blue sky. Somewhere a thrush was singing, practising
his flute-like phrases with conscientious care.
“I think he must be trying for a scholarship,”
said Mollie. “How old is Time?” she
repeated, bringing her gaze down from the tree-tops
to Aunt Mary’s hands, busy as usual with needlework.
“How old is Time?” Aunt Mary echoed.
“What do you mean exactly by Time?”
“I mean, how long is it since days began—morning
and afternoon and evening?”
“Untold millions of years,” her aunt answered.
“I don’t suppose that anyone could say
exactly how many, and in any case when we speak of
Time we mean Time on our own earth; what an astronomer
would say I don’t know.”
“How do you know that it is millions of years
old?” Mollie asked. “In the Bible
it says that the evening and the morning were the
first day in the year 4004 B.C. That is only five
thousand, nine hundred and twenty-four years ago.”
