So Wint went home, in mid-afternoon. He found the house empty. His mother, he thought, was probably next door, with Mrs. Hullis. He felt sleepy; and he went to his room and lay down. His father woke him, at last. Told him it was supper time.
At supper, Chase asked Wint’s mother if she were going to Wint’s rally. She said: “I don’t know. I said to Mrs. Hullis this afternoon that I wanted to go, but I didn’t know whether women went. And she said she didn’t know either. But I told her I—”
“You’ll have plenty of company,” her husband told her. “From what I hear, the whole town is going to be there. Every one was talking about it this afternoon.”
“Then I’m going,” she said. “Mrs. Hullis wanted me to go with her; and I—”
“You go with her,” Chase advised. “I’ll be on the stage, with Wint.”
She said: “I’ll have to leave the dishes. There won’t be—”
“I’ll do them, mother, while you’re dressing,” Wint told her cheerfully. “Don’t worry about that.”
“Well, I don’t know!”
In the end, Wint and his father did them together. Wint broke a plate, and Mrs. Chase called down the stairs to know what had happened, and protested that she ought to come down and do them. But they would not let her. Afterwards, they all started downtown together, Wint and his father, Mrs. Chase and Mrs. Hullis. Two by two.
It was dark; the early dark of a winter evening. They met people, or overtook them, or were overtaken by them; and Wint thought there were more people than usual abroad. The moon was bright again this night, bright as it had been the night before when Wint took his way to the Weaver House. That seemed more like weeks than hours ago. As they came nearer the Rink, they saw more people; and Chase said: