"The rain had just about stopped when we four started down Daphne Street. The elms and maples along the sidewalk was dripping soft, and everybody's gardens was laying still, like something new had happened to them. It smelled good, and like everything outdoors was going to start all over again and be something else, sweeter.
"When we got most to Mis' Emmon's gate, I stopped stock still, looking at something shining on the hill. It was Proudfit House, lit up from top to bottom—the big house on the hill that had stood there, blind and dark, for months on end.
"'Why, some of the Proudfits must of come home,' I says out loud.
"Mis' Emmons answered up, all unexpected to me, for I never knew she knew the Proudfits. 'Mr. Alex Proudfit is coming on to-morrow,' she says. And I sort of resented her that was so near a stranger in the village hearing this about Alex Proudfit before I did, that had known him since he was in knickerbockers.
"'Am I keeping the rain off you two people?' Miss Sidney asks as, at the corner, we all turned our backs on Proudfit House.
"'Nobody,' Insley says—and his voice was always as smooth and round as wheels running along under his words, 'nobody ever kept the rain off as you are keeping it off, Miss Sidney.'
"And, 'I did walked all that way—in that rain,' says Christopher, sleepy, in his automobile's collar.