From the two old men and their consultations it was a relief, even in that chilly and dismal day, to get outside into the free air, though it was heavy with the chill of moisture turning into frost. It was not a cheerful world outside. The sky was the color of lead, and hung low in one uniform tint of dullness over the wet world, with all its wetness just on the point of congealing. The common stretched out its low green broken lines and brown divisions of path to touch the limited horizon. Mrs. Stone’s school, the big white house which stood on the north side, had a sort of halo of mist hanging round it, and everything that moved moved drearily, as unable to contend against the depression in the air. But little Jock Trevor was impervious to that depression; it was the moment of all the twenty-four hours in which he was happy. Though he had lain as still on the rug as if there was no quicksilver at all in his little veins he could scarcely stand quietly now to have his little great-coat put on, which his sister did with great care. She was seventeen, a staid little person, with much composure of manners, dressed in a gray walking-dress, trimmed with gray fur, very neat, comfortable, and sensible, but not quite becoming to Lucy, who was of that kind of fair complexion which tends toward grayness; fair hair, with no color in it, and a face more pale than rosy. Ill-natured people said of her that she was all the same color, hair, cheeks, and eyes--which was not true, and yet so far true as to make the gray dress the least favorable envelope that could have been chosen. There was no irregularity of any kind about her appearance; all was exact, the very impersonation of neatness; a ribbon awry, an irregularity of line anywhere, would have been a relief, but no such relief was afforded to the spectator. Whoever might be found fault with for untidiness in Mrs. Stone’s establishment, it never was Lucy; her collars were always spotless; her ribbons always neatly tied; her dress the very perfection of good order and completeness. She put on her brother’s little coat, and buttoned it to the last button, though he was dancing all the time with impatience; then enveloped his throat with a warm woolen scarf, and tucked in the ends. “Now your gloves, Jocky,” she said, and she would not move till he had dragged these articles on, and had them buttoned in their turn. “What does it matter if you are two minutes earlier or later,” she said, “you silly little Jock? far better to have them buttoned before you go out than to struggle with them all the way. Now, have you got your handkerchief, and has your hat been brushed properly? Well,” Lucy added, surveying him with mingled satisfaction in the result and reluctance to allow it to be complete, “now we may go.”