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Narcissa, riding out of her native village to those unknown fields in which her imagination had laid the scene of the one good time of her life, regarded nothing around her. She sat straight, her slender body resisting stiffly the jolt of the stage. She said not a word, but looked ahead with shining eyes. Her mother wept, a fold of her old shawl before her face. Now and then she lamented aloud, but softly, lest the driver hear.”Goin’ away from the place where I was born an’ married, an’ hav
e lived ever since I knew anything, to stay a year. I can’t stan’ it, I can’t.”

“Hush, mother!You’ll have a real good time.”

“No, I sha’n’t, I sha’n’t. Goin’ – to stay a whole – year. I – can’t, nohow.”

“S’pose we sha’n’t see you back in these parts for some time,” the stage-driver said, when he helped them out at the railroad station. He was an old man, and had known Narcissa since her childhood.

“Most likely not,” she replied. Her mother’s face was quite stiff with repressed emotion when the stage-driver lifted her out. She did not want him to report in the village that she was crying when she started for New York. She had some pride in spite of her distress.

“Well, I’ll be on the lookout for you a year from to-day.” said the stage-driver, with a jocular twist of his face. There were no passengers for his village on the in-coming train, so he had to drive home alone through the melancholy autumn woods. The sky hung low with pale, freezing clouds; over everything was that strange hush which prevails before snow. The stage-driver, holding the reins loosely over his tramping team, settled forward with elbows on his knees, and old brows bent with aimless brooding. Over and over again his brain worked the thought, like a peaceful cud of contemplation.”They’re goin’ to be gone a year. Narcissa Stone an’ her mother are goin’ to be gone a year, afore I’ll drive ’em home.”

So little imagination had the routine of his life fostered that he speculated not, even upon the possible weather of that far-off day, or the chances of his living to see it. It was simply, “They’re goin’ to be gone a year afore I’ll drive ’em home.”

So fixed was his mind upon that one outcome of the situation that when Narcissa and her mother reappeared in less than one week – in six days – he could not for a moment bring his mind intelligently to bear upon it. The old stage-driver may have grown something like his own horses through his long sojourn in their company, and his intelligence, like theirs, been given to only the halts and gaits of its first breaking.

For a second he had a bewildered feeling that time had flown fast, that a week was a year. Everybody in the village had said the travellers would not return for a year. He hoisted the ancient paper-lined trunk into his stage, then a fine new one, nailed and clamped with shining brass, then a number of packages, all the time with puzzled eyes askant upon Narcissa and her mother. He would scarcely have known them, as far as their dress was concerned. Mrs. Stone wore a fine black satin gown; her perturbed old face looked out of luxurious environments of fur and lace and rich black plumage. As for Narcissa, she was almost regal. The old stage-driver backed and ducked awkwardly, as if she were a stranger, when she approached. Her fine skirts flared imposingly, and rustled with unseen silk; her slender shoulders were made shapely by the graceful spread of rich fur, her red hair shone under a hat fit for a princess, and there was about her a faint perfume of violets which made the stage-driver gaze confusedly at the snowy ground under the tress when they had started on the homeward road.”Seems as if I smelt posies, but I know there ain’t none herabouts this time of year,” he remarked, finally, in a tone of mild ingratiation, as if more to himself than to his passengers.