“You are quite mistaken, my dear young friend,” repeated Father Time, “quite wrong.”
“_Young_ friend?” I said, my mind, as one’s mind is apt to in such a case, running to an unimportant detail. “Why do you call me young?”
“Your pardon,” he answered gently--he had a gentle way with him, had Father Time. “The fault is in my failing eyes. I took you at first sight for something under a hundred.”
“Under a hundred?” I expostulated. “Well, I should think so!”
“Your pardon again,” said Time, “the fault is in my failing memory. I forgot. You seldom pass that nowadays, do you? Your life is very short of late.”
I heard him breathe a wistful hollow sigh. Very ancient and dim he seemed as he stood beside me. But I did not turn to look upon him. I had no need to. I knew his form, in the inner and clearer sight of things, as well as every human being knows by innate instinct, the Unseen face and form of Father Time.
I could hear him murmuring beside me, “Short--short, your life is short”; till the sound of it seemed to mingle with the measured ticking of a clock somewhere in the silent house.
“How do you know that I am wrong?” I asked. “And how can you tell what I was thinking?”
“You said it out loud,” answered Father Time. “But it wouldn’t have mattered, anyway. You said that Christmas was all played out and done with.”
“And what makes you think that?” he questioned, stooping, so it seemed to me, still further over my shoulder.
“Why,” I answered, “the trouble is this. I’ve been sitting here for hours, sitting till goodness only knows how far into the night, trying to think out something to write for a Christmas story. And it won’t go. It can’t be done--not in these awful days.”
“Yes. You see, Father Time,” I explained, glad with a foolish little vanity of my trade to be able to tell him something that I thought enlightening, “all the Christmas stuff--stories and jokes and pictures--is all done, you know, in October.”
I thought it would have surprised him, but I was mistaken.
“Dear me,” he said, “not till October! What a rush! How well I remember in Ancient Egypt--as I think you call it--seeing them getting out their Christmas things, all cut in hieroglyphics, always two or three years ahead.”