climbed trees and played more, and had fewer lessons, because it was so
hot, and the little Turner girls came down to play with me sometimes,
because school was out. I went up and played with them sometimes, but
not often unless the launch came down, because it was a long way to walk
in the hot sun.

Mr. Taylor and me used to sit on his back porch, where it was cool, and
tell one another stories.

He told me some fine ones about the war, and when he was a boy. More
things seemed to happen to boys then than they do now, and I told him
so, and he laughed and said that was only because he was seventy-three
and remembered about them. He said that when I was seventy-three, "some
little feller'll think the same thing when you tell him about the fust
airship and things like that."

I laughed at me ever being seventy-three, but I suppose I will some day.
The only fun we had before the letter came was early that very
morning, when Aunty May was sitting reading some clippings her editor
had sent her, with her back to the little cupboard I told about, that
was made out of an old window.

I came down the stairs from my room and stood looking at her, wishing
she'd look up so I could interrupt. But she didn't and I stood there
just as quiet for a minute, and wondering why I suddenly thought about
the pictures in my book on India. Then I heard a little rustle, and I
knew. Just above Aunty May's head, uncoiling itself from round a pile of
plates in the corner, was a big black and yellow snake.

I called out, "Hey, Aunty May! Quick! There's a snake behind you!" And