I want to leave it in the garden for? I don't want a paper
in the garden; I want the paper in the train with me."

"You haven't put it in your pocket?"

"God bless the woman! Do you think I should be standing here at five
minutes to nine looking for it if I had it in my pocket all the while? Do
you think I'm a fool?"

Here somebody would explain, "What's this?" and hand him from somewhere a
paper neatly folded.

"I do wish people would leave my things alone," he would growl, snatching
at it savagely.

He would open his bag to put it in, and then glancing at it, he would
pause, speechless with sense of injury.

"What's the matter?" aunt would ask.

"The day before yesterday's!" he would answer, too hurt even to shout,
throwing the paper down upon the table.

If only sometimes it had been yesterday's it would have been a change.
But it was always the day before yesterday's; except on Tuesday; then it
would be Saturday's.

We would find it for him eventually; as often as not he was sitting on
it. And then he would smile, not genially, but with the weariness that
comes to a man who feels that fate has cast his lot among a band of
hopeless idiots.

"All the time, right in front of your noses--!" He would not finish the
sentence; he prided himself on his self-control.

This settled, he would start for the hall, where it was the custom of my
Aunt Maria to have the children gathered, ready to say good-bye to him.

My aunt never left the house herself, if only to make a call next door,
without taking a tender farewell of every inmate. One never knew, she
would say, what might happen.

One of them, of course, was sure to be missing, and the moment this was
noticed all the other six, without an instant's hesitation, would scatter
with a whoop to find it. Immediately they were gone it would turn up by
itself from somewhere quite near, always with the most reasonable
explanation for its absence; and would at once start off after the others
to explain to them that it was found. In this way, five minutes at least
would be taken up in everybody's looking for everybody else, which was
just sufficient time to allow my uncle to find his umbrella and lose his
hat. Then, at last, the group reassembled in the hall, the drawing-room
clock would commence to strike nine. It possessed a cold, penetrating
chime that always had the effect of confusing my uncle. In his
excitement he would kiss some of the children twice