Uncle David stared at them through the spyglass, from the wet porch.
— They must have turned the power off.
— Why do they turn the power off, Uncle David.
— Oh, I don’t know — to prevent a short circuit, or something.
— But they don’t turn them off in Boston.
— Well, Plymouth isn’t Boston.
— There they come again.
— Yes, now they’ve turned them on. Take a look, Tom? Here, Doris, take a look.
They all looked in turns through the little telescope, the same one through which they regarded the moon-mountains, sweeping it along the row of distant twinkling lights and the beards of reflected light in the water, Susan and myself coming last. Nothing to see, why bother? It was always Uncle David who went out first to see whether the Plymouth lights had yet been turned on. Or what trees had been hit, or whether a haystack or barn had been set afire. Uncle David this, and Uncle David that. Was it because Uncle David was rich. Or because he had nothing to do. He was always there, he was always in everything, pushing about with his red mustache and blue eyes, as if the world belonged to him. It was Uncle David who made us hoe the tennis court, and mark the lines, and who beat everybody except Father at tennis. This year, he was forever playing Mother, sometimes before breakfast, when the rest of us weren’t up yet, at seven o’clock. Several times I was waked up by hearing them, and got out of bed and went to the window to watch them, keeping back from the window so as not to be seen. Mother dressed in white, with her hair in a pigtail down her back, like a girl, and laughing a lot, and saying, David, how could you. Once she turned her ankle, running out into the field after a ball, and then Uncle David picked her up and carried her round the corner to the front of the house. It was because of those hummocks of wild grass, those hard tufts — it was easy to turn your ankle. But when I asked her about it at breakfast she looked surprised, and said it was nothing. Nothing at all.
— But, darling Andy, how did you happen to see? How did you happen to be up so early?
— I heard you playing, Mother.
— David, that was very naughty of us — we mustn’t do it again — we woke them up.
— Oh, I think the little rascal was up on his own account — weren’t you, Andy. He was probably catching flies for that cage of his.
— No I wasn’t, either. I heard you playing, and then I got up to see who it was.
— It doesn’t really matter, though I often think that on these summer mornings, when the light is so early, we might all get up earlier than we do. But, of course, Norah, we won’t — I know your habits too well. And the children must get their full sleep.
— and the tiny little brown pond deep down in the cleft behind the Wardman house, only a stone’s throw from our windmill, with the black alders around it, and the sumacs, and the frogs, and turtles, the turtles which sidled away into the dirty water when we came, and the high rock at one side. I went down to it in the morning and found a rose quartz Indian arrowhead in the sand at the edge of it, a perfect one, very small and sharp. It was a beauty. How Uncle Tom would be pleased when he saw it, for it was better than any we had found before, better even than the white quartz one we had found out at the end of the Point, better far than the flint ones. I sat there on the rock by the sumacs, and knew that it was Thursday, for on Thursday afternoons I had to go to the village and have my Latin lesson with Mr. Dearing, in the white house at the water’s edge, with his knockabout moored a little way out, in which, perhaps, after the lesson, he would take me for a sail. His house was a nice one, with lots of books and pictures, it was quiet and small like himself, and smelt of lavender. He was like Uncle Tom. Uncle Tom, if Mr. Dearing asks me to go for a sail, can I go. Last time he let me take the tiller, and I learned how to come about. We followed the yacht race, and beat them, on the same course, too, but outside them at every buoy, which made it longer. The course with the first leg toward Clark’s Island and the second toward the Point. You know the one, we’ve often watched them from the porch. Can I do that. Or can I go by myself to the woods on the other side of Standish Hill, to see if I can find some wild indigo, and press it, and see if it turns black in the book. Or would you like to come with me.
— No Porper, I can’t take you to the Horse Monument this afternoon, because Uncle Tom and I are going to the woods to look for wild flowers.
— But I want to see the Horse Monument.
— But you’ve seen it dozens of times, Porper.
— I want to see it. I want to see where the horse was buried.
— Why don’t you take him, Susan?
— Oh, Porper — why do you want to see it. You know what it’s like — it’s just like any other tombstone, only it’s made of bricks, and it’s because a horse was buried there, a man’s favorite horse, and he put up a monument for it when it died. He was a nice man, wasn’t he?
— I want to see the Horse Monument.
— Go on, Susan, and take him. It’s your turn. I took him last time.
At Mr. Dearing’s, the clock ticked on the white-painted wooden mantelpiece, between the model of a ship and a barometer, the clock ticked Latin, and Mr. Dearing’s gentle voice asked me questions, went through my exercise, alternately chastened and sustained me, while through the open window, on the side of the house toward the bay, the soft sound of the waves came, lapping among reeds and eelgrass, and the knocking of a dory against the float. If I turned my head I could see Mr. Dearing’s knockabout, with its boom, the mainsail neatly furled, propped up in its shears of wood. Now that declension again. You’re a little shaky on that declension. Those ablatives seem to bother you, don’t they? And those verbs. You must get them into your head. Utor, fruor, potior, fungor, and vescor. They have a nice sound, Andy, don’t you think? Utor, fruor, fungor, potior, and vescor.
Uncle Tom had on his white yachting cap, with the green vizor, and the tin cylinder hung from his shoulder, and as we climbed the sandy road over Standish Hill, I asked him if he had heard the bell ring, the bell of the Unitarian Church. We were passing a clump of sumacs.
— These aren’t poison sumacs, are they, Uncle Tom?
— No. But what about that bell?
— I rang it myself, at ten minutes past two.
And I told him how it had happened. The village barber was cutting my hair, and said that he was the church sexton, and that he had to go and wind the clock, and asked me if I’d like to see how he did it, it was just across the road. We unlocked the church and went in, and climbed up two flights of dark stairs in the tower, and then two ladders which went straight up through narrow trap doors until we got to a shaky landing beside the machinery of the clock, where there were lots of cobwebs and dust. The barber wound a crank, and we could hear the clock ticking very loud. Then he asked me if I would like to strike the bell, and gave me a short rope and told me to pull it: I gave it a pull, and the machinery began grinding to itself, a sort of growling, and then suddenly came the huge ring of sound, shaking the belfry, everything trembled with it, and I thought of the bell sound traveling all the way to Powder Point, and every one wondering what time it was.