"You have too," she said. She slipped down from the wall and ran wild and free toward the classroom building. "Don't forget! After school!" he called. Don't forget, she thought bitterly, running, don't forget.... * * * * * School was over, and they left the grounds together. The grass underfoot was soft and green. The shade trees around the path, pleasantly protecting. The neat, clean houses, set in the forest at intervals, individual proud flower beds a dot in the smooth, close cropped lawns. The sky, bright blue with sunset on the horizon (through the trees) gold and purple, and the air, clean, perfumery. Adults moved around their homes, puttering in the gardens, mending the tiny spots where mending was required; their faces were bright eyed, young, peaceful, but wise with the wisdom of experience. "We're a lot alike," Clyde said after a while. "Are we?" "Don't you think so?" "I don't know," she said, looking away from him, thinking that it would be nice to go on forever walking in the sunset like this. "Where do you live?" "Down here," she said vaguely. "Oh." They walked on, passed a pond almost covered with lilies that were opened out, in white and yellow bloom: passed a banyan tree, where miniature turtle doves had gathered to coo softly for night; over a small wood bridge spanning a stream of clear hurtling waters. "... You started school here just last year, didn't you?" She swallowed down the tenseness in her throat. "Yes ... I came from ... the East." She knew that she should have said it more glibly, but the words seemed to clog in her throat. "That's what I thought," he said. "I don't remember you before last year." They came to a widening of the lane where an ancient tree stood alone, as if the rest of the trees had moved back to give it room, out of respect to its venerability. He stopped her with his hand. "Wait, Margy." The hand, warm on her elbow, was bad, and she wanted to shake it away, and she wanted to leave it there. "Yes?" she said weakly. "... Uh.... Let's talk," he said, taking the hand away. "Talk?" she said, trying to gain time and marshal her thoughts. Then there was laughter from behind them, along the lane they had followed. "Two of the kids from school," Clyde said disappointedly; he turned to wave. "No. It's all right. I see their adult bands." Shortly, the adults, nodding pleasantly with the confidence and understanding of hundreds of years, passed them and continued down the lane, looking no older than the two adolescents. When they had gone, vanishing around a sharp bend in the lane, Clyde said, "Uh, Margy. Have you ever thought, I mean _really_ thought, of having to grow up?" "... Yes," she said, feeling a calmness come to her, an almost iciness, a resignation.