On Saturday morning when the children came downstairs, they stopped in the kitchen as they always did before their dew bath, for their juice. This was a daily habit. Grandfather said it helped get their digestion ready for breakfast if they had their juice a half hour before breakfast, rather than with it. This morning there was a fresh raspberry juice, a delicious drink, if ever there was one.

"Happy Summertime, to you!" Grandfather called across the lawn as the children ran to meet him in their blur silk pajamas. "It is the twenty-first day of June, the day Summer begins, officially and the longest day of the whole year." Grandfather informed them of his almanac readings.

"Was it Springtime, yesterday?" Ardath stopped short to think about a new season beginning.

"Will it be hotter, today, than it was yesterday?" Arthur asked before Grandfather could answer Ardath's question.

"It was Springtime, yesterday, but there will be little change in temperature." Grandfather answered both questions at once. "It is the longest day, because the sun will go down a minute later than it did yesterday; not much longer, but a minute can make a great deal of difference, sometimes in the affairs of life." Grandfather seldom missed an opportunity to teach promptness or some other practical virtue to the children, in his everyday conversation with them.

"After breakfast, Grandfather said, "This is an ‘on your own' morning as soon as your chores are finished. You have been here long enough to seek your own healthful experiences without any suggestions from me."

Ardath must have slept very well in the big bed because she was brimming with beautiful ideas.

"I didn't pull water lilies, yet.' Ardath told Arthur when they were ready to go "on your own". "Grandfather said I could pull some and that I could float them in a big glass dish Mary would give to me."

Water lilies were open only in the morning until the sun was so high in the sky that it threatened to scorch their delicate petals. So, the children went to the pond, first. In the afternoon, the lilies would stay closed. Sometimes they stayed open during a gentle rain.

"Watch me climb a tree first," Arthur coaxed his sister.

"No, I'm going to get water lilies, first, then I'll watch you climb a tree," Ardath protected her first beautiful idea.

Most of the lilies were too far from the edge of the pool to reach safely, but Ardath pulled five. She put them on the grass alongside the pool as she pulled them. They would have been crushed if she had held them in her hand.

Arthur helped her carry them to the house. Mary found just the right glass dish for the lilies. It was broad and flat. When the lilies were floating in the dish, Ardath did not know where she would put it, then decided the dining room table, as a centerpiece, would be a place where everyone could enjoy it. She remembered what Grandfather had said about bringing fresh flowers in the house, so she imagined fairies came in with the lilies and were hovering over them.

"Come on, you said you would watch me climb a tree," Arthur urged, impatiently. Ardath wanted to admire her centerpiece a while longer so walked around the table several times looking at it, before she went along with her brother.

Arthur climbed higher than he had climbed when Ardath was not with him. Her presence may have given him confidence. It could be that he thought she would catch him if he fell, but he did not fall. He climbed down the tree as safely as he had climbed up it.

Ardath remembered the baby chicks and that Grandfather had told the children where to find the coops they slept in. When they found the coops, of course the chicks were not asleep because they had been awake since sunrise, following the mother hen about the meadow. The children heard the mother hen clucking in the meadow so they followed the sound and got their shoes and socks soaking wet in a marshy place they crossed to get to the chicks. The wet shoes and socks did not hinder their fun in watching the chicks. The mother hen would cluck and pick and the chicks would try to imitate her.

The morning was not half long enough to do all the delightful things the children thought of doing. Rain clouds blew across the sky so they went in for lunch, before the bell tinkled to let them know it was time to prepare themselves. They took off their shoes and cleaned the mud from them. Then they washed their socks in the bathroom and hung them up to dry on the towel racks. They were barefooted again as they had been in the early morning. They were often barefooted except when they were around the barn where they always wore shoes to keep their feet clean, if for no other reason.

Lunch was a jolly time on this longest day in the year. Grandfather asked the children riddles. One was, "What goes around the house and makes only one track?"

Arthur should have known the answer to that one, but he could not think of it. When Grandfather said, "A wheelbarrow," Arthur held his head with both hands, trying to be funny.

"What goes up and down and doesn't touch the sky or ground?" Grandfather laughed. "Surely, you know that answer." But neither Arthur nor Ardath knew what it was.

When Grandfather said it was a "pump handle", Ardath slapper her forehead, trying to make herself think better than she had been thinking.

Every day Arthur had pumped water for the puppies from the pump near the barn. Ardath had seen the pump every day, but she did not think of it when Grandfather was asking riddles.

They were having so much fun, they had not even noticed that it was raining. By the time lunch was finished, there was a downpour.

After listening to the story the night before, Arthur made no pretense of not wanting to take his "rest and listen" time. He was beginning to learn that it was a privilege, something that Ardath had know for a long time.
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