The Aeronauts or The Fateful Stone "Aunt Mary, how old is Time?" asked Mollie. She was resting on her sofa in the garden, after her first attempt at a short walk. She had been wondering how her young grandpapa had got on with his sprained ankle, and longed to ask questions about him, but dared not venture even on the simplest. It was so easy to forget and ask too much. The day was rather hot, and the couch had been drawn into the shade of a great copper-beech. Mollie lay on her back, gazing up through the silky red foliage at the blue sky. Somewhere a thrush was singing, practising his flute-like phrases with conscientious care. "I think he must be trying for a scholarship," said Mollie. "How old is Time?" she repeated, bringing her gaze down from the tree-tops to Aunt Mary's hands, busy as usual with needlework. "How old is Time?" Aunt Mary echoed. "What do you mean exactly by Time?" "I mean, how long is it since days began--morning and afternoon and evening?" "Untold millions of years," her aunt answered. "I don't suppose that anyone could say exactly how many, and in any case when we speak of Time we mean Time on our own earth; what an astronomer would say I don't know." "How do you know that it is millions of years old?" Mollie asked. "In the Bible it says that the evening and the morning were the first day in the year 4004 B.C. That is only five thousand, nine hundred and twenty-four years ago." "You are asking terribly big questions," Aunt Mary said, with a smile. "It would take a long time to explain how men learnt to know the age of the world, and I am afraid I am hardly equal to the task. It is only about seventy years since geologists began to suspect that our earth was far older than they had supposed, I have some simple books which I think you could understand if you tried; and if you learn to take an interest in geology you need never be dull again as long as you live. You will find 'tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything'." "That would be very nice," Mollie said politely but not enthusiastically; "but just now I only want to know how old Time is. Millions and millions of years," she repeated to herself rather dreamily. "If you took forty from millions and millions it wouldn't make any difference worth mentioning. It makes even Adam seem almost as near as last week. And this morning I said I hadn't time to darn a hole in my stocking. I wonder if Eve said she had no time. Were there any people before Adam, Aunt Mary?" Aunt Mary shook her head. "Ask the wise thrush," she said; "his ancestors are older than mine." "Are they really!" Mollie exclaimed. "Did that thrush's ever-so-great-grandfather sing in the Garden of Eden?"