Father Time

It was one of those splendid mellow golden days in early autumn when many trees, though still green, begin to betray a trace of red or yellow. In the afternoon I took little Eleanor to the park just round the corner from where we live. I came across a man whose hair, greying slightly, was swept back to hide a bald patch. His cheeks were hollow and he wore bifocals: "Der Hund tut nicht beissen!"--he reassured me when Eleanor ran up to one of his hounds. Only little children and dogs were worth knowing, he said, the rest he didn't give a hang for. Eleanor was accosting all-comers--frosty matrons, flint-faced marchers who had calculated that the most direct path between A and B led through the park. Then she joined in a knock-about game of football till a young Turkish lad, shrewd in psychology, gave her a spare ball to play with all on her own. Her euphoria was ended when, carrying her trophy off she tumbled down a six-inch hole. By the time she'd recovered, the ball, ineluctably, was somewhere else. Unabashed, she toddled to the playground, where she found some children digging away in a sandpit. She brought out the mother in a girl of eleven and bathed in the glow of much adulation, too young to know divisions of language and custom, to be aware that the minutes were fast ticking away. Then I looked at my watch: Well past six, almost dark. Despite my entreaties, Eleanor remained unpersuaded that it was really time for us to go. With what vehemence she kicked and screamed, how transfixing her glares when I got the pushchair and strapped her down. She made me feel what a pig I was all the way home. NB. Der Hund tut nicht beissen - The dog does not bite