agitating Calista and me. In the end we were outvoted, and we went. Our families, it seemed, all took the same attitude: We need not plant trees if we did not wish to plant trees. Save in the case of Harold Rodman. He was ruled to be too small to walk to Prospect Hill, and he preferred going back to school to staying at home alone.
“I won’t plant no tree, though,” he announced resentfully, as we left him. “I’m goin’ dig ’em all up!” he shouted after us. “Every one in the world!”
It was when I was running round the house to get my lunch that I came for the second time face to face with Mary Elizabeth.
Mary Elizabeth was sitting flat on the ground, cleaning knives which I recognized as our kitchen knives. This she was doing by a simple process, not unknown to me and consisting of driving the knife into the ground up to its black handle and shoving it rapidly up and down. It struck me as very strange that she should be there, in our back yard, cleaning our knives, and I somewhat resented it. For it is curious how much of a savage a little girl in a white apron can really be. But then I did not at once recognize
