quandary. She knew that I was not to be too heavily chided and yet—the top drawers of this world must be tidied.
“Think!” she said. “That Hour has gone out the window without its work being done. And now this Hour, that was meant for play, has got to work. But not you! You’ve lost your turn. Now it’s Mother’s turn.”
She made me sit by the window while she tidied the drawer. I was not to touch it—I had lost my turn. While she worked, she talked to me about the things she knew I liked to talk about. But I could not listen. It is the only time in my life that I have ever really frantically wanted to tidy a top bureau drawer of anybody’s.
"Now,” she said when she had done, "this last Hour will meet the Hour-before-the-last, and each of them will look the way the other ought to have looked, and they will be all mixed up. And all day I think they will keep trying to come back to you to straighten them out. But you can’t do it. And they’ll have to be each other forever and ever and ever.”
She went away again, and I was left face to face with the very heart of this whole perplexing Time business: those two Hours that would
