“We can go down about seven,” Lydia said, “and not stay too long.  But I suppose ’most every one in Monroe will run in to wish her many happy returns.  Tom David’s wife will come in from Westlake with Grandma’s great-grandchildren, I guess, and all the others will be there.”

“That houseful alone would kill me, let alone having the whole tribe stream in, if I were seventy-eight!” Martie observed.  “But I’d just as soon go.  We’ll see how we feel after dinner!”

And after dinner, the night being fresh and sweet, and the meal early concluded because Malcolm was delayed in Pittsville and did not return for dinner, the three Monroes pinned on their hats, powdered their noses, and buttoned on their winter coats.  Any excitement added to her present ecstatic mood was enough to give Martie the bloom of a wild rose, and Sally had her own reasons for radiance.  Lydia alone, walking between them, was actuated by cool motives of duty and convention and sighed as she thought of the heat and hubbub of the Hawkes’s house, and the hour that must elapse before they were back in the cool night again.

The Hawkeses had always lived in one house in Monroe.  It was a large, square, cheap house near the bridge, with a bare yard kept shabby by picking chickens, and a fence of struggling pickets.  Behind the house, which had not been painted in the memory of man, was a yawning barn which had never been painted at all.  In the yard were various odds and ends of broken machinery and old harness; a wagon-seat, on which Grandma sometimes sat shelling beans or peeling potatoes in the summer afternoons; old brooms, old saucepans, and lengths of rope, clotted with mud.  Fuchsia and rose-bushes languished in a tipsy wire enclosure near the front door.

To-night, although the yard presented a rather dismal appearance in the early winter dark, the house was bursting with hospitality and good cheer.  From every one of the bare high windows raw gushes of light tunnelled the gloom outside, and although the cold outside had frosted all the glass, dim forms could be seen moving about, and voices and laughter could be heard.

Martie briskly twisted the little rotary bell-handle that was set in the centre of the front door, and before its harsh noise had died away, the door was flung open and the Monroe sisters were instantly made a part of the celebration.  Hilarious members of the family and their even more hilarious friends welcomed them in; the bare hallway was swarming with young persons of both sexes; girls were coming down the stairs, girls going up, and the complementary boys lined the wall, or, grinning, looked on from the doorways.