I love the morning light,--the freshness, the pearls and diamonds, the
fairy linen spread on the grass to bleach (there be those who call it
spider-web, but to such I speak not), the silver fog curling up from
river and valley. I love it so much that I am loath to confess that
sometimes the evening light is even more beautiful. Yet is there a
softness that comes with the close of day, a glorification of common
things, a drawing of purple shadows over all that is rough or
unsightly, which makes the early evening perhaps the most perfect time
of all the perfect hours.

It was such an hour that now brooded over the little village, when the
people came out from their houses to watch for Melody's coming. It is
a pretty little village at all times, very small and straggling, but
lovely with flowers and vines and dear, homely old houses, which have
not found out that they are again in the fashion out of which they
were driven many years ago, but still hold themselves humbly, with a
respect for the brick and stucco of which they have heard from time to
time. It is always pretty, I say, but this evening it had received
some fresh baptism of beauty, as if the Day knew what was coming, and
had pranked herself in her very best for the festival. The sunbeams
slanted down the straggling, grass-grown road, and straightway it
became an avenue of wonder, with gold-dust under foot, flecked here
and there with emerald. The elms met over head in triumphal arches;
the creepers on the low houses hung out wonderful scarfs and banners
of welcome, which swung gold and purple in the joyous light. And as
the people came out of their houses, now that the time was drawing
near, lo! the light was on their faces too; and the plain New England
men and women, in their prints and jeans, shone like the figures in a
Venetian picture, and were all a-glitter with gold and precious stones