Youth and Age

"As the days waned, men chopped wood and women pressed the last of fall's bounty into jars that would be sealed and whisked off to dark cellars. The children romped in the sun getting so hot they removed their tiny sweaters and left them on the stump of a tree, rightly forgotten until the sun began to sink low behind the freshly cut wheat fields. Between games of hide-and-seek and ring-around-the- rosey the girls rested at the feet of the old lady who seemed much like Alice's caterpillar."