eight o'clock
Monday brought the perfection of a traveler 's morning . There had been a shower during the night , and the highways lay cool , moist , and dark brown between the green of the fields and the clean-washed , red-brick pavements of the town . There would be no dust even on the railroad , and the air was an impalpable draught of delight . To the three young girls , standing there under the station portico , -- for they chose the smell of the morning rather than the odors of apples and cakes and indescribables which go to make up the distinctive atmosphere of a railway waiting-room , -- there was but one thing to be done to-day in the world ; one thing for which the sun rose , and wheeled himself toward that point in the heavens which would make eight o'clock down below . Of all the ships that might sail this day out of harbors , or the trains that might steam out of cities across States , they recked nothing but of this that was to take them toward the hills . There were unfortunates , doubtless , bound elsewhere , by peremptory necessity ; there were people who were going nowhere but about their daily work and errands ; all these were simply to be pitied , or wondered at , as to how they could feel _ not _ to be going upon a mountain journey . It is queer to think , on a last Thursday in November , or on a Fourth of July , of States where there may not be a Thanksgiving , or of far-off lands that have no Independence day .