eight o'clock
The village women rustled through the soft dusk with silken whispers of wide best skirts . Young girls with spring buds in their hair flounced about with white muslins , and fluttering with ribbons , flitted along . The men , holding back firmly their best broadcloth shoulders , marched past in their creaking Sunday shoes . Before eight o'clock the fine old rooms in Parson Fair 's house were lined with faces solemnly expectant , as the faces of simple country folk are wont to be before the great rites of love and death . The women sat with their mitted hands folded on their silken laps , their best brooches pinning decorously their fine-wrought neckerchiefs , their bosoms filled with sober knowledge and patient acquiescence . The young girls sat among them very still , with the stillness of unrest , like birds who alight only to fly , their soft cheeks burning , their necks and arms showing rosy through their laces , their little clasped fingers full of pulses , and their hearts tumultuous and stirred to imagination by the sweet surmise and ignorance of love . They looked seldom at the young men , and the young men at them , as they sat waiting .