Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury

ridiculous! It’s perfectly obvious. Everyone was young once!”
    â€œNot you,” whispered Jane, eyes down, almost to herself. Her empty ice stick had fallen in a vanilla puddle on the porch floor.
    â€œBut of course I was eight, nine, ten years old, like all of you.”
    The two girls gave a short, quickly-sealed-up laugh.
    Mrs. Bentley’s eyes glittered. “Well, I can’t waste a morning arguing with ten-year-olds. Needless to say, I was ten myself once and just as silly.”
    The two girls laughed. Tom looked uneasy.
    â€œYou’re joking with us,” giggled Jane. “You weren’t really ten ever, were you, Mrs. Bentley?”
    â€œYou run on home!” the woman cried suddenly, for she could not stand their eyes. “I won’t have you laughing.”
    â€œAnd your name’s not really Helen?”
    â€œOf course it’s Helen!”
    â€œGood-bye,” said the two girls, giggling away across the lawn under the seas of shade, Tom followed them slowly. “Thanks for the ice cream!”
    â€œOnce I played hopscotch!” Mrs. Bentley cried after them, but they were gone.
    Â 
    M rs. Bentley spent the rest of the day slamming teakettles about, loudly preparing a meager lunch, and from time to time going to the front door, hoping to catch those insolent fiends on their laughing excursions through the late day. But if they had appeared, what could she say to them, why should she worry about them?
    â€œThe idea!” said Mrs. Bentley to her dainty, rose-clustered teacup. “No one ever doubted I was a girl before. What a silly, horrible thing to do. I don’t mind being old—not really—but I do resent having my childhood taken away from me.”
    She could see the children racing off under the cavernous trees with her youth in their frosty fingers, invisible as air.
    After supper, for no reason at all, with a senseless certainty of motion, she watched her own hands, like a pair of ghostly gloves at a seance, gather together certain items in a perfumed kerchief. Then she went to her front porch and stood there stiffly for half an hour.
    As suddenly as night birds the children flew by, and Mrs. Bentley’s voice brought them to a fluttering rest.
    â€œYes, Mrs . Bentley?”
    â€œCome up on this porch!” she commanded them, and the girls climbed the steps, Tom trailing after.
    â€œYes, Mrs. Bentley?” They thumped the “Mrs.” like a bass piano chord, extra heavily, as if that were her first name.
    â€œI’ve some treasures to show you.” She opened the perfumed kerchief and peered into it as if she herself might be surprised. She drew forth a hair comb, very small and delicate, its rim twinkling with rhinestones.
    â€œI wore this when I was nine,” she said.
    Jane turned it in her hand and said, “How nice.”
    â€œLet’s see!” cried Alice.
    â€œAnd here is a tiny ring I wore when I was eight,” said Mrs. Bentley. “It doesn’t fit my finger now. You look through it and see the Tower of Pisa ready to fall.”
    â€œLet’s see it lean!” The girls passed it back and forth between them until Jane fitted it to her hand. “Why, it’s just my size!” she exclaimed.
    â€œAnd the comb fits my head!” gasped Alice.
    Mrs. Bentley produced some jackstones. “Here,” she said. “I once played with these.”
    She threw them. They made a constellation on the porch.
    â€œAnd here!” In triumph she flashed her trump card, a postal picture of herself when she was seven years old, in a dress like a yellow butterfly, with her golden curls and blown blue-glass eyes and angelic pouting lips.
    â€œWho’s this little girl?” asked Jane.
    â€œIt’s me !”
    The two girls held onto it.
    â€œBut it doesn’t look like you,” said Jane simply. “Anybody could get a picture like this, somewhere.”
    They