churches; and at the other extreme, one of the square white mansions stood
advanced from the rank of the rest, at the top of a deep-plunging valley,
defining itself against the mountain beyond so sharply that it seemed as if
cut out of its dark, wooded side. It was from the gate before this house,
distinct in the pink light which the sunset had left, that, on a Saturday
evening in February, a cutter, gay with red-lined robes, dashed away, and
came musically clashing down the street under the naked elms. For the
women who sat with their work at the windows on either side of the way,
hesitating whether to light their lamps, and drawing nearer and nearer to
the dead-line of the outer cold for the latest glimmer of the day, the
passage of this ill-timed vehicle was a vexation little short of grievous.
Every movement on the street was precious to them, and, with all the
keenness of their starved curiosity, these captives of the winter could not
make out the people in the cutter. Afterward it was a mortification to them
that they should not have thought at once of Bartley Hubbard and Marcia
Gaylord. They had seen him go up toward Squire Gaylord's house half an hour
before, and they now blamed themselves for not reflecting that of course he
was going to take Marcia over to the church sociable at Lower Equity.
Their identity being established, other little proofs of it reproached the
inquirers; but these perturbed spirits were at peace, and the lamps were
out in the houses (where the smell of rats in the wainscot and of potatoes
in the cellar strengthened with the growing night), when Bartley and Marcia
drove back through the moonlit silence to her father's door. Here, too, the
windows were all dark, except for the light that sparely glimmered through
the parlor blinds; and the young man slackened the pace of his horse, as if
to still the bells, some distance away from the gate.

The girl took the hand he offered her when he dismounted at the gate, and,
as she jumped from the cutter, "Won't you come in?" she asked.