The Book of Small
Time
Father was a stern straight man. Straight legs and shoulders; straight side-trim to his beard, the ends of which were straight-cut across his chest. From under heavy eyebrows his look was direct, though once in a rare while a little twinkle forced its way through. Then something was likely to happen.
Our family had to whiz around Father like a top round its peg.
It was Sunday. Father was carving the saddle of mutton. Everybody was helped. Father’s plate had gone up for vegetables. Uncle and Auntie Hays were visiting us from San Francisco.
Father’s twinkle ran up the table to Mother and zig-zagged back, skipping Auntie, who was fixing her napkin over her large front with a diamond pin.
Father said, “What about a picnic on Saturday, Mother? We will have the omnibus and go to Mill Stream.”
The two big sisters, we three little girls and the small brother were glad. Mother beamed on us all. Auntie attended to her mutton. Uncle never did have anything to say. He was like the long cushion in the church pew—made to be sat on.
All week we stared at the clock, but, for all she ticked, her hands stuck; it took ages for her to register even a minute. But Saturday did come at last and with it, sharp at ten, the yellow bus.
Uncle Hays made a nest of cushions in one corner of the bus for Auntie. Pies and cakes, white-wrapped and tucked into baskets like babies, the tea-billy wrapped in a newspaper petticoat—all were loaded in and we took our places and rattled away.
The bus had two horses and carpet seats. Its wheels were iron-bound and made a terrible racket over the stones.
Only the very middle of our town was paved and sprinkled; beyond the town was dust and bumps.
The seats of the bus were high. We three little girls discovered that we bumped less if we did not dangle, so we knelt on the seat and rested our arms on the open window ledges, till Auntie told Uncle he must shut all the windows except one, or the dust would ruin her new dust coat. After that we dangled and bumped.
Auntie grumbled all the way about Victoria’s poor little blue water-barrel cart, that could only do the middle of the town, and told us of the splendid water-wagons of San Francisco.
At last we drove through a gate and down a lane and stopped. The driver opened the door and we all spilled out onto the grass beside a beautiful stream.
Uncle built a new nest for Auntie. There were pine boughs as well as pillows to it now, and she looked like a great fat bird sitting there peeping and cooing at uncle over the edge.
The table-cloth was spread on the grass close to Auntie’s nest. As soon as lunch was over Mother said, “Now children, run along. Don’t go into the thick woods, keep by the stream.”
Father looked at his watch and said, “It’s now one o’clock—you have till five.”
Downwards the stream broadened into a meadow; upstream it bored a green tunnel through the forest, a tunnel crooked as a bed-spring. It curled round and round because there were so many boulders and