I have never really understood Daylight Saving Time. I don’t remember whether we even had it then. All I do remember is that as winter came on, the days became too short for us to get out of school and reach home before dark, even when we ran part of the way. There was always snow by then, and our boots squeaked on it. We didn’t need much light to see our way; the moon and stars were enough. If the sky was overcast, we followed the ruts and sang songs to cheer ourselves up. We talked, and I told Tim stories that I had read and could recite word for word. I would tell him an episode each evening. Sometimes when the story was coming to an exciting part, we would see the kerosene lamp shining through the windows far ahead, and slowed down so I could finish that part before we got home. Or, if I was feeling mischievous, I might take Tim to the part of the story where the adventurers hear something in the underbrush; then I would take off and run for home as fast as I could, with him chasing me. We had a rule—if he caught me before I got inside the front gate, I had to sneak down the hall to his room that night, after my father and Miss Pauline had gone to bed, and finish the story.

It was nice to have someone to talk to, and although (as I said) we fought a lot, Tim and I were true friends. He stood up for me at school, where some of the other kids got unruly when I always won the spelling bee and the other contests that called for memory. Oddly enough, my grades were not very good. Although I could remember every word I heard, I did not always understand and so often fell into error by repeating, by rote, what I had learned without understanding how step A related to step B and how both affected step C. The teacher, who had to control the first six grades all in the same room, was alternately delighted and distraught by me. He dreamed of having a statewide spelling winner but despaired when, after having recited a difficult series of verb declensions, I was unable to use any of them in a rational sentence.

“Elizabeth Allison!” he would sputter. “You don’t know your lesson.”

“You told me to memorize it,” I would answer sweetly. “I know every word.”

“But you don’t understand what you’re saying,” he would choke. Still he was on shaky ground, and he knew it. Few of his other pupils really understood what they had absorbed so painfully by rote, either.