The next day the child was radiant; she danced rather than walked; she could not speak without a smile; she could eat nothing, for her happiness was so purely spiritual that desires of the flesh were in abeyance.  Her heart beat fast; the constantly recurring memory of what was about to happen fairly overwhelmed her as with waves of delight.

“If you don’t eat your supper you can’t go, and that’s all there is about it,” her mother told her when they were seated at the table, and Ellen sat dreaming before her toast and peach preserve.

“You must eat your supper, Ellen,” Andrew said, anxiously.  Andrew had on his other coat, and he had shaved, and was going too, as was Mrs. Zelotes Brewster.

“She ’ain’t eat a thing all day, she’s so excited about goin’,” Fanny said.  “Now, Ellen, you must eat your supper, or you can’t go—­you’ll be sick.”

And Ellen ate her supper, though exceeding joy as well as exceeding woe can make food lose its savor, and toast and preserves were as ashes on her tongue when the very fragrance of coming happiness was in her soul.

When, finally, in hand of her mother, while Andrew walked behind with her grandmother, she went towards the lights of the town, she had a feeling as of wings on her feet.  However, she walked soberly enough with wide eyes of amazement and delight at everything—­the long, silver track of the snowy road under the light of the full moon, the slants of the house roofs sparkling with crusts of crystals, the lighted windows set with house plants, for the dwellers in the outskirts of Rowe loved house plants, and their front windows bloomed with the emulative splendor of geraniums from fall to spring.  She saw behind them glimpses of lives and some doings as real as her own, but mysterious under the locks of other personalities, and therefore as full of possibilities of preciousness as the sheet of morning dew over a neighbor’s yard; she had often believed she saw diamonds sparkle in that, though never in her own.  She had proved it otherwise too often.  So Ellen, seeing through a window a little girl of her own age in a red frock, straightway believed it to be satin of the richest quality, and, seeing through another window a tea-table spread, had no doubt that the tin teapot was silver.  A girl with a crown of yellow braids pulled down a curtain, and she thought her as beautiful as an angel; but of all this she said nothing at all, only walked soberly on, holding fast to her mother’s hand.

When they were half-way to the shops, a door of a white house close to the road flew open and shut again with a bang, there was a scurry and grating slide on the front walk, then the gate was thrown back, and a boy dashed through with a wild whoop, just escaping contact with Mrs. Zelotes Brewster.  “You’d better be careful,” said she, sharply.  “It ain’t the thing for boys to come tearin’ out of yards in the evenin’ without seein’ where they are goin’.”