The barn yard kept a morning window just for powder. Chinchillas took numbers from a clover stem, one little cloud to a coat, and sat very still while the fluff learned their names.
We asked at the grocer by the gate. "I thought the baker had boiled over," said a woman with a loaf under her arm. "Then a chinchilla nodded at me, took its cloud, and went back to being round. I have never been so politely outwaited by a coat."
The keeper pinned a note to the latch: one cloud each, moss towels on the rail, and please do not hurry a neighbor still wearing last night's neatness. A day later a late guest returned, shook once, and left the yard looking kinder than the kettle.