This was the month of cherries and peaches, of green apples beyond the grape arbor, of little dandelion ghosts in the grass, of sour grass and four-leaf clovers, of still dry heat holding the smell of nasturtiums and dying lilacs. This was the best month of all and the best day. It was not birthday, Easter, Christmas, or picnic, but all these things and something else, something wonderful, something utterly unknown. The two little girls in embroidered white Sunday dresses knew no way to express their secret joy but by whirling each other dizzily over the lawn crying, "We're moving, we're moving! We're moving to London Junction!"

Down the cinder driveway between the Willard house and Dr. Bird's box hedge rumbled the hay wagon, laden with the Willard furniture. The sudden picture of their home, everything that was theirs, yanked out of its familiar roots like baby teeth and stacked up on wheels, made the children stand still, staring, uncertain. There was their little pine bed standing on end, the baby's high-chair hanging by a rope from the corner pole, the big walnut dresser with its front bulging out like a funny-paper policeman's; there were the two big parlor chairs, wide rockers curved in perpetual grins, wonderful for scooting games; there was the couch bought with coupons—bright yellow fuzzy stuff with red and green caterpillars wiggling circles over it so that it always seemed alive and dangerous; there was the pine kitchen cupboard tied on its back to the dining-table as if it had left its little corner only when overpowered by force. Yes, there went their little yellow house itself, for without these things warming its insides, the little yellow house was nothing but empty doors and windows. They watched the wagon wheels roll relentlessly over the pansy border and leave deep ruts in the soft new grass, but it didn't matter because they didn't live here any more. Like their furniture, now being brushed by the overhanging branches of Peach Street, they were suspended in space between the little yellow cottage, Number Twenty-Three, and the unknown towers of London Junction. This must be the reason that time, too, was suspended, for no matter how often they ran to ask their mother the time, it was always nine o'clock, a little before, a little after, but not quite starting time. So round and round they swung each other over the grass, as if this example of speed would whip up the minutes.

"We're moving, we're moving, we're moving to London Junction!" they chanted shrilly. This time they whirled through the gap in the hedge into Dr. Bird's front yard. This was a hushed space, shaded with sleek-leafed bushes, wide-spreading locust trees that dripped feathery green over fern beds below. The sun never came here or into the shuttered, vine-covered house; it was an old people's yard with a cool cemetery smell, suitable for an old man and old lady who never came out further than the plaster old man and lady in the tiny weather-house. Old Dr. Bird sat behind the porch vines, shelling peas into a tin saucepan.

"Hold on there! What's all this?" he called out in a high trembling voice.

"We're moving!" Lena answered. "We're moving to London Junction."

"Here," said the old man. "Here you are, girls. Here's a penny apiece."

They flew to his side.

"Dr. Bird," asked Marcia earnestly, "who will hold the string for you to tie up bundles when I go to London Junction?"

"Nobody," said Dr. Bird. "I'll have to do it myself."

"I'm sorry," said Marcia. "I liked putting a finger on the string. I don't see how you'll get along."

"Never mind, here's your penny," said the old man. "Run along or your folks'll drive off without you."

"Say goodbye to Dr. Bird," their mother called from the surrey now pausing in the driveway. "Well, here we go, Dr. Bird."

"Glad, eh?"

"Indeed I am," their mother answered happily. "You see, I'll be there with Ma and Lois, and besides it's a better place for Harry."