"Run on, run on! Let papa brood!"
He was shut of love, the children of love, and the love of children. He thought only of heavens, skies, horizons, infinities, by night or day, lit by star, moon, or sun, cloudy or clear, but always it was skies and heavens and horizons that ran ahead of you forever when you soared. Yet here he was, sculling the pasture, kept low for fear of being seen.
Misery in a deep well!
"Papa, come watch us; it's March!" cried Meg. "And we're going to the Hill with all the kids from town!"
Uncle Einar grunted. "What hill is that?"
"The Kite Hill, of course!" they all sang together.
Now he looked at them.
Each held a large paper kite, their faces sweating with anticipation and an animal glowing. In their small fingers were balls of white twine. From the kites, colored red and blue and yellow and green, hung caudal appendages of cotton and silk strips.
"We'll fly our kites!" said Ronald. "Won't you come?"
"No," he said, sadly. "I mustn't be seen by anyone or there'd be trouble."
"You could hide and watch from the woods," said Meg. "We made the kites ourselves. Just because we know how."
"How do you know how?"
"You're our father!" was the instant cry. "That's why!"
He looked at his children for a long while. He sighed. "A kite festival, is it?"
"Yes, sir!"
"I'm going to win," said Meg.
"No, I'm!" Michael contradicted.
"Me, me!" piped Stephan.
"Wind up the chimney!" roared Uncle Einar, leaping high with a deafening kettledrum of wings. "Children! Children, I love you dearly!"
"Father, what's wrong?" said Michael, backing off.
"Nothing, nothing, nothing!" chanted Einar. He flexed his wings to their greatest propulsion and plundering. Whoom! they slammed like cymbals. The children fell flat in the backwash! "I have it, I have it! I'm free again! Fire in the flue! Feather on the wind! Brunilla!" Einar called to the house. His wife appeared. "I'm free!" he called, flushed and tall, on his toes. "Listen, Brunilla, I don't need the night anymore! I can fly by day! I don't need the night! I'll fly every day and any day of the year from now on! - but I waste time, talking. Look!"
And as the worried members of his family watched, he seized the cotton tail from one of the little kites, tied it to his belt behind, grabbed the twine ball, held one end in his teeth, gave the other end to his children, and up, up into the air he flew, away into the March wind!
And acro
ss the meadows and over the farms his children ran, letting out string to the daylit sky, bubbling and stumbling, and Brunilla stood back in the farmyard and waved and laughed to see what was happening; and her children marched to the far Kite Hill and stood, the four of them, holding the ball of twine in their eager, proud fingers, each tugging and directing and pulling. And the children from Mellin Town came running with their small kites to let up on the wind, and they saw the great green kite leap and hover in the sky and exclaimed:
"Oh, oh, what a kite! What a kite! Oh, I wish I'd a kite like that! Where, where did you get it!"
"Our father made it!" cried Meg and Michael and Stephen and Ronald, and gave an exultant pull on the twine and the humming, thundering kite in the sky dipped and soared and made a great and magical exclamation mark across a cloud!
THE TIME MACHINE
"Seems like the town is full of machines," said Douglas, running. "Mr. Auffmann and his Happiness Machine, Miss Fem and Miss Roberta and their Green Machine. Now, Charlie, what you handing me?"
"A Time Machine!" panted Charlie Woodman, pacing him. "Mother's, scout's, Injun's honor!"
"Travels in the past and future?" John Huff asked, easily circling them.