I dressed in the dark, braided my own hair in the dark—by now I could do this save that the plait, when I brought it over my shoulder, still would assume a jog—and sat down by the open window. It was one of the large nights ... for some nights are undeniably larger than others. When I was on the street with my hand in a grown-up hand, the night was invariably bounded by trees, fences, houses, lawns, horse-blocks, and the like. But when I stepped to the door alone at night, I always noticed that it stretched endlessly away. So it was now. I could slip out the screen, as I had discovered earlier in the season when I had felt the need of feeding a nest of house-wrens in the bird-house below my sill—and I took out the screen now, and leaned out in the darkness. The stars seemed very near—I am always glad that I did not know how far away they are, for they looked so friendly near. If only, I used to think, the clouds would form behind the stars and leave them all shiny and blurry bright in the rain. What were they? How came they to be in our world’s sky?
I suppose that I had been ten minutes at the window that morning when I saw a light briefly flash in Mary Elizabeth’s window. Instantly, I softly pulled my bell. She answered, and then I could see her, dim in the window once more dark.
“It isn’t time yet!” she called softly—our houses were very near.
“Not yet,” I answered, “but I’m going to stay up.”
Mary Elizabeth briefly considered this.
“What for?” she propounded.
I had not thought what for.
“To—why to be up early,” I answered confidently. “I’m all dressed.”
The defence must have carried conviction.
“I will, too,” Mary Elizabeth concluded.