Sometimes, in later life, when I have seen folk lunch because it is one o’clock, worship because it is the seventh day, go to Europe because it is Summer, and marry because it is high time, I wonder whether Delia was not right. Often and often I have been convinced that what Mother told me about the Hours trying to come back to get one to straighten them out is true with truth undying. And I wish, that morning by the window, and at those grim, inevitable Bed-times, that I, as I am now, might have told that Little Me this story about how, just possibly, they first noticed time and about what, just possibly, it is. II IN NO TIME Before months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds were counted and named, consider how peculiar it all must have seemed. For example, when the Unknown-about Folk of those prehistoric times wished to know _when_ a thing would happen, of course they can have had no word _when_, and no answer. If a little Prehistoric Girl gave a party, she cannot have known when to tell her guests to come, so she must have had to wait until the supper was ready and then invite them; and if they were not perfectly-bred little guests, they may have been offended because they hadn’t been invited before--only they would not have known how to say or to think “before,” so they cannot have been quite sure what they were offended at; but they may have been offended anyway, as happens now with that same kind of guest. And if a little Prehistoric Boy asked his father to bring him a new eagle or a new leopard for a pet, and his father came home night after night and didn’t bring it, the Prehistoric Boy could not say, “_When_ will you bring it, sir?” because there was no when, so he may have asked a great many other questions, and been told to sit in the back of the cave until he could do better. Nobody can have known how long to boil eggs or to bake bread, and people must have had to come to breakfast and just sit and wait and wait until things were done. Worst of all, nobody can have known that time is a thing to use and not to waste. Since they could not measure it, they could not of course tell how fast it was slipping away, and they must have thought that time was theirs to do with what they pleased, instead of turning it all into different things--this piece into sleep, this piece into play, this piece into tasks and exercise and fun. Just as, in those days, they probably thought that food is to be eaten because it tastes good and not because it makes the body grow, so they thought that time was a thing to be thrown away and not to be used, every bit--which is, of course, a prehistoric way to think. And nobody can have known about birthdays, and no story can have started “Once upon a time,” and everything must have been quite different. About then,--only of course they didn’t know it was then--a Prehistoric Mother said one morning to her Prehistoric Little Daughter:--