nd Father wasn't. She fell
into silence again, standing by her mother's knee, staring out of the
window and watching the clouds move steadily across the sky doing
their share of the world's work for all they looked so soft and lazy.
Her mother did not break in on this meditative contemplation. She took
up her sewing-basket and began busily to sew buttons on a small pair
of half-finished night-drawers. The sobered child beside her, gazing
up at the blue-and-white infinity of the sky, heard faintly and
distantly, for the first time in her life, the whirring reverberations
of the great mystic wheel of change and motion and life.

Then, all at once, there was a scraping of chairs overhead in Father's
study, a clattering on the stairs, and the sound of a great many
voices. The Saturday seminar was over. The door below opened, and the
students came out, Father at the head, very tall, very straight, his
ruddy hair shining in the late afternoon sun, his shirt-sleeves rolled
up over his arms, and a baseball in his hand. "Come on, folks," Sylvia
heard him call, as he had so many times before. "Let's have a couple
of innings before you go!" Sylvia must have seen the picture a hundred
times before, but that was the first time it impressed itself on her,
the close-cut grass of their yard as lustrous as enamel, the big
pine-trees standing high, the scattered players, laughing and running
about, the young men casting off their coats and hats, the detached
fielders running long-legged to their places. At the first sound of
the voices, Judith, always alert, never wasting time in reveries, had
scampered down the stairs and out in the midst of the stir-about.
Judith was sure to be in the middle of whatever was going on. She had
attached herself to young Professor Saunders, a special favorite of
the children, and now was dragging him from the field to play horse
with her. Father looked up to the window where Sylvia and Mother sat,
and called: "Come on, Barbara! Come on and amuse Judith. She won't let
Saunders pitch."

Mother nodded, ran downstairs, coaxed Judith over beyond first base to
play catch with a soft rubber ball; and Sylvia, carried away by the
cheerful excitement, hopped about everywhere at once, screaming
encouragement to the base runners, picking up foul balls, and sending
them with proud importance back to the pitcher.

So they all played and shouted and ran and laughed, while the long,
pale-golden spring afternoon stood s