She used
to repeat to herself then what Uncle Mathew had once told her: "This
time next year you'll have forgotten all about this," but when it
was a question of facing the immensities of the Last Day that
consolation was strangely inapt. It was dusk very early and she
longed for Martha to bring the lamp.
At last it came and tea and Aunt Elizabeth. Aunt Anne had not
appeared all day. Then long dreary hours followed until supper, and
after that hours again until ten o'clock.
She had not been certain, all this time, whether the aunts meant to
take her to the service with them. She had supposed that her
introduction to the meeting at Miss Avies's meant that they intended
to include her in this too, but now, as the evening advanced, in a
fit of nervous terror she prayed within herself that they would not
take her. If the end of the world were coming she would like to meet
it in her bed. To go out into those streets and that ugly unfriendly
Chapel was a horrible thing to do. If this were to be the end of the
world how she did wish that she might have been allowed to know
nothing about it. And those others--Miss Pyncheon and the rest who
devoutly believed in the event--how were they passing these last
hours?
"Oh, it isn't true! It can't be true!" she said to herself.
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