four o'clock
These impressions of her daintiness and demureness are particularly vivid in a picture my memory has retained of our walking together , unattended , to Susan Blackwood 's birthday party . She must have been about twelve years old . It was the first time I had escorted her or any other girl to a party ; Mrs. Willett had smiled over the proceeding , but Nancy and I took it most seriously , as symbolic of things to come . I can see Powell Street , where Nancy lived , at four o'clock on a mild and cloudy December afternoon , the decorous , retiring houses , Nancy on one side of the pavement by the iron fences and I on the other by the tree boxes . I ca n't remember her dress , only the exquisite sense of her slimness and daintiness comes back to me , of her dark hair in a long braid tied with a red ribbon , of her slender legs clad in black stockings of shining silk . We felt the occasion to be somehow too significant , too eloquent for words ... . In silence we climbed the flight of stone steps that led up to the Blackwood mansion , when suddenly the door was opened , letting out sounds of music and revelry .