Once after such a conclave, when the tunes of the carols still lingered in the heat-shimmered air, I remember climbing up into the tree-house and sitting there alone for a long time. Brother called up: "What are you doing?" "Thinking," I answered. "What are you thinking about?" "I don't know." "Well, how can you be thinking when you don't know what you are thinking about?" I did not want to talk with my brother. I was experiencing the first wonder about the mystery of Time. Here I was, on this August afternoon, in the tree-house, in the burnt, jaded yard, sick and tired of all our summer ways. (I had read Little Women for the second time, Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates, Little Men, and Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. I had read movie magazines and even tried to read love stories in the Woman's Home Companion—I was so sick of everything.) How could it be that I was I and now was now when in four months it would be Christmas, wintertime, cold weather, twilight and the glory of the Christmas tree?
