1 On the floor beside her stood his old valise and a bandbox wrapped in newspapers.
2 He bundled himself into his old coon-skin coat and lay down on the box-sofa to think.
3 Though she was but seven years her husband's senior, and he was only twenty-eight, she was already an old woman.
4 But I haven't got the time now; I'm late as it is, he returned, holding his old silver turnip-watch to the candle.
5 Suddenly he heard the old sorrel whinny across the road, and thought: "He's wondering why he doesn't get his supper."
6 When he raised himself again he saw that she was dragging toward the stove the old soap-box lined with carpet in which the cat made its bed.
7 He followed her and brought the other geraniums, the hyacinth bulbs in a cracked custard bowl and the German ivy trained over an old croquet hoop.
8 He had scattered the contents of the table-drawer in his search for a sheet of paper, and as he took up his pen his eye fell on an old copy of the Bettsbridge Eagle.
9 But the old horse was there alone, mumbling his crib with toothless jaws, and Ethan whistled cheerfully while he bedded down the grays and shook an extra measure of oats into their mangers.
10 Once or twice, hearing sleigh-bells, Ethan turned his head, fancying that Zeena and Jotham might overtake him; but the old sorrel was not in sight, and he set his face against the rain and urged on his ponderous pair.
11 He thought that by starting out again with the lumber as soon as he had finished his dinner he might get back to the farm with the glue before Jotham and the old sorrel had had time to fetch Zenobia from the Flats; but he knew the chance was a slight one.
12 Great was her amazement, and that of old Mrs. Varnum, on learning that Ethan Frome's old horse had carried me to and from Corbury Junction through the worst blizzard of the winter; greater still their surprise when they heard that his master had taken me in for the night.
13 He was an old friend of Ethan's family, and his house one of the few to which Zeena occasionally went, drawn there by the fact that Mrs. Hale, in her youth, had done more "doctoring" than any other woman in Starkfield, and was still a recognised authority on symptoms and treatment.