eight o'clock in the evening
Just across the street from the old Ashton place was another house equally old and yet wholly unlike it , for instead of being a stately , well-kept-up mansion with great rooms and broad halls and half an acre of garden about it , this was a cottage of the earliest New England type . It was low and rambling , covering a good deal of ground and yet without any porch and very little yard , because as the village closed about it and Elm Street became a fashionable quarter the land had been gradually sold until now its white picket fence was only a dozen feet from the front door and passers-by could easily have looked inside its parlor windows save for the tall bushes that served as a shield . By immemorial custom the cottage had always been painted white and green , but for a good many years it had not been troubled by any paint at all , `` but had lived , '' as Polly said , `` on its past , and like a good many persons in Woodford had gotten considerably run down by the process . '' Now there were no lights at any of the front windows , although it was eight o'clock in the evening , but as the warm steady glow of a lamp shone from the rear of the house , it was plainly occupied . There was no doubt of this in the mind of the girl who stood knocking noisily at the closed door , saying in an imploring voice : `` Oh , do please hurry , Polly dear , you know it is only me and that I ca n't bear to be kept waiting . '' At this moment a candle was evidently being borne down the hall , for the door opened so quickly afterwards that two girls , one on either side the door , fell into , one another 's arms . `` Dear me , it 's ` The Princess ' and she is no more ill than I am , though we were told she could n't possibly be at school to-day on account of her ill health , '' the girl on the inside spoke first , recovering her breath .