So the rest of the summer you could see the two little girls and Tom like wrens on a wire, on Mrs. Bentley's front porch, waiting. And when the silvery chimes of the icicle man were heard, the front door opened, Mrs. Bentley floated out with her hand deep down the gullet of her silver-mouthed purse, and for half an hour you could see them there on the porch, the children and the old lady putting coldness into warmness, eating chocolate icicles, laughing. At last they were good friends. "How old are you, Mrs. Bentley?" "Seventy-two." "How old were you fifty years ago?" "Seventy-two." "You weren't ever young, were you, and never wore ribbons or dresses like these?" "No." "Have you got a first name?" "My name is Mrs. Bentley." "And you've always lived in this one house?" "Always." "And never were pretty?" "Never." "Never in a million trillion years?" The two girls would bend toward the old lady, and wait in the pressed silence of four o'clock on a summer afternoon. "Never," said Mrs. Bentley, "in a million trillion years.
( Ray Bradbury )
[ Bradbury Stories: 100 of His ]
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