imagine why all those taxis you ordered didn’t turn up. After that your line has to be that you think it’s just a blast to pick up six boys, five lacrosse sticks and a left-over pair of skis at Kingswood and hurtle across town fast enough to collect the seven Renbrook girls only fifteen minutes late. “It’s just like playing Sardines, isn’t it?” you cry gaily all the way home. The silence remains stony, but at least they can’t tell their mothers Mrs. Heath forgot again.
A lateness of over half an hour, though, especially in the winter time, when you drive up to find your little group huddled and forlorn in the bleak darkness of an empty schoolyard, is heartbreaking. There’s nothing you wouldn’t do to make it up to them—like a stop at the Friendly for a round of Awful-awfuls. Awful-awfuls cost fifty cents apiece, it turns out, and by the time the children have finished them and you have paid for them, they may think you’re not so bad after all, but you think you’re worse.
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