“Meeting? Why, of course I am. I wouldn’t miss it for anything. I’ll be ready in half a minute. Will you?”
Aunt Betty, in her short black skirt, her old gray sack, and her heavy shoes, did not make much of a holiday appearance. Something of this crept slowly into her brain as she looked down, so she turned quickly, and went away without another word.
Marion gave some girl-like twists to her brown hair, pinned a gay scarlet bow to the neck of her sack, and, looking fresh and pretty as a rosebud, went to the kitchen, where she had to wait some time before Aunt Betty made her appearance. 154
Cousin Abijah had brought the old horse and sleigh round to the back door. Here a long slanting roof ran down to the lintel of the door, and up to the plain cornice snow-drifts lay piled. What a winter scene it was! Marion, never having seen the like before, gazed at it in wondering admiration.
When Aunt Betty and Marion started for the village meeting-house, the thermometer was fifteen degrees below zero.
Aunt Betty took a rein in each hand, and as soon as the snow-banks bordering the narrow path to the road were safely passed, began a series of jerks at the horse’s mouth, which Dan perfectly well understood, too well, indeed, to allow himself to be hurried in the least.
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“One foot up, and one foot down, That’s the way to Lunnon town,” |
laughed Marion when they had gone a few rods.
“Klick! Klick!” with more decisive tugs from Dan’s mistress; but the “Klicks,” as well as the tugs, were of no avail, and Marion, afraid to venture another comment, turned her eyes from the horse to the scenery around her.
Notwithstanding the extreme cold, the ride to the little meeting-house Marion will never forget. When she left the farmhouse it seemed to her a short walk would bring her to the foot of the snow-clad mountains; but, to her surprise, when they reached the church they were towering up above the small village 155 like huge sentinels, so still, so grand, that, hardly conscious she was speaking aloud, Marion said,—