"No, I'm not gloomy, I'm only truthful. I can't see any use in pretending that things are different from what they are," I said. "But there is great use in proving that things are different from what they seem," replied Fay enigmatically. By this time we were standing by the old sundial. "Look at that," I said, laying my hand on the grey stone pedestal; "no one nowadays can turn the shadow on the dial ten degrees backward. It simply isn't done. When morning is past it is past, and when summer is past it is past, and when youth is past it is past, and not all the saints in the calendar can bring them back again." "Still One greater than the saints once did turn the shadow on the dial of Ahaz ten degrees backward. And if He did it once, why shouldn't He do it again?" said Fay softly. "Because, my child, He doesn't. The age of miracles is past." "No, it isn't. It was a miracle when Mr. Henderson cured Frank. You said so yourself. So miracles do happen." I was surprised to find Fay persistent on the point, but I held my own. "Yes, but not this kind of miracle. Frank was made alive again, I admit; but that doesn't mean that old people like Annabel and myself will be made young again. The two cases are absolutely different. A miracle may give us back our future, but no miracle can give us back our past." Fay smiled a strange sort of smile: the sort that I remember on my mother's face when I was a little boy; but all she said was, "Oh, if you're going to pick and choose your miracles, I've done with you." "I'm not picking and choosing my miracles, as you call it, I'm only pointing out that certain things don't happen, and that people merely make unhappiness for themselves and for others by pretending or imagining that they do. I'm grateful for St. Luke's summer, but I don't delude myself into imagining that it is the real summer come back again. I'm grateful--and so is Annabel--for the young life that you and Frank have brought into our home and into our lives, but I don't delude myself with the belief that because we feel young when we are with you, we really are young. It is autumn with Annabel and me, and it always will be autumn until it changes into winter: there is no more spring or summer for us, and it would be foolish as well as futile to imagine that there is." But Fay still argued. "Frank and I don't make Miss Kingsnorth feel young, we make her feel most awfully old and wise and sensible, and she enjoys the feeling. She wouldn't be young again for anything, it would bore her beyond words. But you are different: you are quite young really--in your mind and soul, I mean--but you pretend to be old. You aren't a St. Luke's summer at all: you are one of those June days when it seems cold and we light a fire, and then the sun comes out and we are boiled to death. You aren't autumn masquerading as spring: you are really a boy dressed up as Father Christmas, like those you see in toy-shops in December."