definite. Her evenly braided hair, her square finger tips, her blunt questions, her sense of what was due to Delia —all these were definite.
“City!” she would burst out. “You can’t play City unless you’ve got all afternoon.”
And Margaret Amelia and Betty Rodman, who were pretty definite too, would back Delia up; but since they usually had permission to stay all afternoon, they would acquiesce when I urged: “Oh, well, let’s start in anyhow.” Then about the time the outside wall had been laid up in the sand-pile and we had selected our building sites, the town clock would strike my hour, which would be brought home to me only by Delia saying:—
“Don’t you go. Will she care if you’re late?”
On such occasions we never used the substantive, but merely “she.” It is worth being a child to have a sense of values so simple and unassailable as that.
“I’m going to do just this much. I can run all the way home,” I would answer; and I would begin on my house walls. But when these were done, and the rooms defined by moist sand partitions, there was all the fascination of its garden, with walks to be outlined with a
