“It don't take me all day to trade a few aigs for a jug o' m'lasses an' a plug o' terbacker.”
For answer the head of the house told his family to “jist roll out now.” They rolled out and in a few minutes they had all rolled in. Mrs. Parkin made a heroic effort not to look inhospitable which made Mary's heroic effort not to look amused still more heroic.
When at last the afternoon was drawing to a close Mary went out into the yard to rest. She wished John would come. Hark! There is the ring of horses' hoofs down the quiet road. But these are white horses, John's are bays. She turns her head and looks into the west. Out in the meadow a giant oak-tree stands between her and the setting sun. Its upper branches are outlined against the grey cloud which belts the entire western horizon, while its lower branches are sharply etched against the yellow sky beneath the grey.
What a calm, beautiful sky it was!
She thought of some lines she had read more than once that morning ... a bit from George Eliot's Journal:
“How lovely to look into that brilliant distance and see the ship on the horizon seeming to sail away from the cold and dim world behind it right into the golden glory! I have always that sort of feeling when I look at sunset. It always seems to me that there in the west lies a land of light and warmth and love.”
A carriage was now coming down the road at great speed. Mary saw it was her husband and went in to put on her things. In a few minutes more she was in the buggy and they were bound for home. It was almost ten o'clock when they got there. The trip had been so hard on the horses that all the spirit was taken out of them. The doctor, too, was exceedingly tired. “Forty-two miles is a long trip to make in an afternoon,” he said.
“I hope Jack and Maggie are not up so late.”
“It would be just like them to sit up till we came.”
The buggy stopped; the door flew open and Jack and Maggie stood framed in the doorway with the leaping yellow firelight for a background.