“Here’s what you get--here’s what you get--here’s what you get! Something cheap--cheap--_cheap!_” * * * * * When I came home from the fireworks with Delia’s family and Mary Elizabeth, my father and mother were sitting on the veranda. “It’s we who are to blame,” I heard my father saying, “though we’re fine at glossing it over.” I wondered what had happened, and I sat down on the top step and began to untie my last torpedo from the corner of my handkerchief. Mary Elizabeth had one left, too, and we had agreed to throw them on the stone window-sills of our rooms as a final salute. “Let’s ask her now,” said father. Mother leaned toward me. “Dear,” she said, “father has been having a talk with Mary Elizabeth’s father and mother. And--when her father isn’t here any more--which may not be long now, we think ... would you like us to have Mary Elizabeth come and live here?” “With us?” I cried. “_With us?_” Yes, they meant with us. “To work?” I demanded. “To be,” mother said. “Oh, yes, _yes!_” I welcomed it. “But her father--where will he be?” “In a little while now,” father said, “he will be free--and perhaps even equal.” I did not understand this wholly. Besides, there was far too much to think about. I turned toward the house of the New Family. A light glowed in Mary Elizabeth’s room. I brought down my torpedo on the brick walk, and it exploded merrily, and from Mary Elizabeth’s window came an answering pop. “Then Mary Elizabeth will get free and equal too!” I cried joyously. XIX EARTH-MOTHER And for that day and that night, and for all the days and all the nights, I should like to tell a story about the Earth, and about some of the things that it keeps expecting. And if it were Sometime Far Away--say 1950--or 2050--or 3050--I should like to meet some Children of Then, and tell them this story about Now, and hear them all talk of what a curious place the earth must have been long ago, and of how many things it did not yet do. And their Long Ago is our Now! * * * * * For ages and ages (I should say to the Children of Then) the Earth was a great round place of land and water, with trees, fields, cities, mountains, and the like dotted about on it in a pattern; and it spun and spun, out in space, like an enormous engraved ball tossed up in the air from somewhere. And many people thought that this was all there was to know about it, and after school they shut up their geographies and went about engraving new trees, fields, cities, and such things on the outside of the earth. And they truly thought that this was All, and they kept on doing it, rather tired but very independent.