by a bowl of hot ginger tea and an equal bulk of ice-cream.
In other ways time was extraordinary. We used to play with it: “Now is now. But now that other Now is gone and a Then is now. How did it do it? How do all the Nows begin?”
“When is the party?” we had sometimes inquired.
“To-morrow,” we would be told.
Next morning, “Now it’s to-morrow!” we would joyfully announce, only to be informed that it was, on the contrary, to-day. But there was no cause for alarm, for now the party, it seemed, had changed too, and that would be to-day. It was frightfully confusing.
“When is to-morrow?” we demanded.
“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
