noon
There was positively a thrill for J.M. in the thought of his possibly influencing other people , and before he knew it the plan had made itself the main interest of the interminably long , empty days of the summer vacation . His vague feeling of a lack in his life crystallized about a definite attempt at filling it . He was stirred from his inertia and , leaving word with the registrar of the college , a newcomer who was not at all surprised that the librarian should follow the example of all the rest of the faculty , J.M. made the three hours ' journey which had separated him for so many years from the home of his youth . As the train wound along the valley beside the river , and as the familiar outlines of the mountains rose up like the faces of dear , unforgotten friends , J.M. expanded and bloomed with delight in his new idea ; but it was a very shriveled and dusty little old scholar who finally arrived at the farther end of the Main Street of Woodville and stood , in the hush of the noon hour , gazing back with a stricken face at the row of slovenly unlovely front yards separating the wretched old houses from the street . He stood before the house that had been his home , and when he looked at it he turned very pale and sat down quickly as though his knees had failed him . Apparently the house had not been painted since his childhood , and certainly it had not been repaired . Broken , dangling shutters gave it a blear-eyed look which it made him sick to see , and swarms of untidily pin-feathered chickens wandered about over the hard-beaten earth of the yard , which was without a spear of grass , littered with old boxes and crates and unsightly rags , and hung with a flapping , many-legged wash .