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.
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