On New Year's Eve we were all together in Uncle Alec's kitchen,
which was tacitly given over to our revels during the winter
evenings. The Story Girl and Peter were there, of course, and
Sara Ray's mother had allowed her to come up on condition that she
should be home by eight sharp. Cecily was glad to see her, but
the boys never hailed her arrival with over-much delight, because,
since the dark began to come down early, Aunt Janet always made
one of us walk down home with her. We hated this, because Sara
Ray was always so maddeningly self-conscious of having an escort.
We knew perfectly well that next day in school she would tell her
chums as a "dead" secret that "So-and-So King saw her home" from
the hill farm the night before. Now, seeing a young lady home
from choice, and being sent home with her by your aunt or mother
are two entirely different things, and we thought Sara Ray ought
to have sense enough to know it.

Outside there was a vivid rose of sunset behind the cold hills of
fir, and the long reaches of snowy fields glowed fairily pink in
the western light. The drifts along the edges of the meadows and
down the lane looked as if a series of breaking waves had, by the
lifting of a magician's wand, been suddenly transformed into
marble, even to their toppling curls of foam.

Slowly the splendour died, giving place to the mystic beauty of a
winter twilight when the moon is rising. The hollow sky was a cup
of blue. The stars came out over the white glens and the earth
was covered with a kingly carpet for the feet of the young year to
press.

"I'm so glad the snow came," said the Story Girl. "If it hadn't