The bell was ringing for afternoon meeting--in fact, it was almost done.

Jerome walked faster, for he intended to go.

He drew near the little white-steepled meeting-house standing in its small curve of greensward, with the row of white posts at the side, to which were tied the farmers' great plough-horses harnessed to covered wagons and dusty chaises, and then he caught a glimpse of something bright, like a moving flower-bush, in the road ahead.

Squire Eben Merritt, his wife, his sister Miss Camilla, and his daughter Lucina, were all on their way to afternoon meeting.
The Squire was with them that day, leaving heroically his trout-pools and his fishing-fields; for was it not his pretty Lucina's second Sunday only at home, and was he not as eager to be with her as any lover?
Squire Eben had gained perhaps twenty pounds of flesh to his great frame and a slight overcast of gray to his golden beard; otherwise he had not changed in Jerome's eyes since he was a boy.

The Squire's wife Abigail, like many a small, dark woman who has never shown in her looks the true heyday of youth, had apparently not aged nor altered at all.