15:00 · afternoon
One lantern in the box is wrong — six-sided, punched tin, older, with star-shaped holes. Told it will look odd in the row, Spotty and Blushy hang it on its own at the turn by the bridge, where the light is genuinely needed. It is the one thing on the path everybody recognises in the dark.
3 fluffs tell this minute. None of them saw the same one.
There was one lantern in the box that was wrong. Six-sided, punched tin, older than all the others, with little holes in it shaped like stars.
"We can't use that," somebody said. "It'll look odd in the row."
Spotty picked it up, and I went over, because I always go over when somebody is about to be left out of something. I have my reasons.
"It's the best one," I said.
I met Spotty and Blushy coming down from the bridge in the afternoon — they had hung the odd tin lantern up at the worst corner, on its own, where a light was actually needed — and I said it was the best bit of the whole path and asked who had done it.
Blushy pointed at Spotty. Straight away. No hesitation at all.
I noticed it at the time and thought: there are a great many of us doing that.
There was one lantern in the box that was wrong.
All the others were the same as each other: round, glass-sided, wire handle, perfectly nice. This one was six-sided, punched tin, older than the rest, with little holes in it in the shape of stars.
"We can't use that," somebody said. "It'll look odd in the row."
I picked it up.
