flush on the
snowy roofs and the blue drifts, then the wind sprang up afresh, with a
kind of bitter song, as if it said: 'This is reality, whether you like
it or not. All those frivolities of summer, the light and shadow, the
living mask of green that trembled over everything, they were lies, and
this is what was underneath. This is the truth.' It was as if we were
being punished for loving the loveliness of summer.

If I loitered on the playground after school, or went to the post-office
for the mail and lingered to hear the gossip about the cigar-stand, it
would be growing dark by the time I came home. The sun was gone; the
frozen streets stretched long and blue before me; the lights were
shining pale in kitchen windows, and I could smell the suppers cooking
as I passed. Few people were abroad, and each one of them was hurrying
toward a fire. The glowing stoves in the houses were like magnets. When
one passed an old man, one could see nothing of his face but a red nose
sticking out between a frosted beard and a long plush cap. The young men
capered along with their hands in their pockets, and sometimes tried
a slide on the icy sidewalk. The children, in their bright hoods and
comforters, never walked, but always ran from the moment they left their
door, beating their mittens against their sides. When I got as far as
the Methodist Church, I was about halfway home. I can remember how glad
I was when there happened to be a light in the church, and the painted
glass window shone out at us as we came along the frozen street. In
the winter bleakness a hunger for colour came over people, like the
Laplander's craving for fats and sugar. Without knowing why, we used to
linger on the sidewalk outside the church when the lamps were lighted
early for choir practice or prayer-meeting, shivering and talking until
our feet were like lumps of ice. The crude reds and greens and blues of
that coloured glass held us there.

On winter nights, the lights in the Harlings' windows drew me like the
painted glass. Inside that warm, roomy house there was colour, too.
After supper I used to catch up my cap, stick my hands in my pockets,
and dive through the willow hedge as if witches were after me. Of
course, if Mr. Harling was at home, if his shadow stood out on the blind
of the west room, I did not go in, but turned and walked home by the
long way, through the street, wondering what book I should read as I sat
down with the two old people.