wasn’t first before us. Mother told father this morning that we’d had our stair-carpet fifteen years.”
We faced that. Fifteen years. Nearly twice as long as we had lived. If a stair-carpet had lasted like that, what was the use of thinking that we could find anything to control on the ground of our having been here first?
Delia Dart, however, was a free soul. “I think we begun before bed-time did,” she said decidedly. “Because when we were babies, we didn’t have any bed-time. Look at babies now. They don’t have bed-times. They sleep all the while.”
It was true. Bed-time must have started after we did. Besides, we remembered that it was movable. Once it had been half past seven. Now it was eight. Delia often sat up, according to her own accounts, much later even than this.
“Grown-ups don’t have any bed-time either,” Betty took it up. “They’re like babies.”
This was a new thought. How strange that Grown-ups and babies should share this immunity, and only we be bound.
“Who made bed-time?” I inquired irritably.
