atch, now--" suggested Jonathan, as he carefully
tucked under the pan little sticks of just the right length.

"What should we know more than we do now--that we're hungry?" I asked.

"Well, for one thing, we'd know what time it is," replied Jonathan
tranquilly.

"And for another we'd know whether it's dinner or supper I'm cooking," I
supplemented. "But does it matter? You won't get anything different, no
matter which it is--just fish is what you'll get. And pretty soon the sun
will be out, and you can set up a stick and watch the shadow and make a
sundial for yourself."

"Oh, I don't really care which it is."

"Do you suppose I don't know that! And meanwhile, you might cut the bread
and make some toast,--there are some good embers on your side under the
pan,--and I'll get the butter, and there we'll be."

By the time the toast was made and the fish curling brownly away from the
pan, the sun had indeed come out, at first pale and watery, then clear,
and still high enough in the heavens to set the soaked earth steaming
fragrantly with its heat. Odors of hemlock and wet earth mingled with
odors of toast and fried fish.

"Um-m! Smell it all!" I said. "What a lot we should miss if we didn't eat
in the kitchen!"

"Or cook in the dining-room--which?"

"And hear that song sparrow! Doesn't it sound as if the rain had washed
his song a little cleaner and clearer?"

There followed the wonderful afterlight that a short, drenching rain
leaves behind it--a hush of light, deeply pervasive and friendly. The
sunshine slanted across the gleaming wet rocks in the river, lit up the
rain-darkened trunks of the hemlocks, glinted on the low-hanging leaves,
and flashed through the dripping edges of sagging fern fronds. As twilight
came on, we canoed across to the side of the river where the road lay--the
other side was steep and pathless woods--and walked down to the nearest
farmhouse to buy eggs for the morning. Back again by the light of a
low-hung moon, and across the dim water to our own island and the embers
of our fire.

"Oh, Jonathan! We never asked them what time it was!" I said. "I meant
to--for your sake--I thought you'd sleep better if you knew."

"Too bad! Probably I should have. I thought of it, of course, but was
afraid that if I asked it would spoil your day."

"It would take something pretty bad to spoil a day like this one," I said.

* * * * *

Two days later the weather turned