or something to say.

Having turned about, he kept his horse to a walk, and at this gait
the sleighbells tinkled but intermittently. Gleaming wanly through the
whitish vapour that kept rising from the trotter's body and flanks, they
were like tiny fog-bells, and made the only sounds in a great winter
silence. The white road ran between lonesome rail fences; and frozen
barnyards beyond the fences showed sometimes a harrow left to rust, with
its iron seat half filled with stiffened snow, and sometimes an old
dead buggy, it's wheels forever set, it seemed, in the solid ice of deep
ruts. Chickens scratched the metallic earth with an air of protest, and
a masterless ragged colt looked up in sudden horror at the mild tinkle
of the passing bells, then blew fierce clouds of steam at the sleigh.
The snow no longer fell, and far ahead, in a grayish cloud that lay upon
the land, was the town.

Lucy looked at this distant thickening reflection. "When we get this
far out we can see there must be quite a little smoke hanging over the
town," she said. "I suppose that's because it's growing. As it grows
bigger it seems to get ashamed of itself, so it makes this cloud and
hides in it. Papa says it used to be a bit nicer when he lived here:
he always speaks of it differently--he always has a gentle look, a
particular tone of voice, I've noticed. He must have been very fond of
it. It must have been a lovely place: everybody must have been so jolly.
From the way he talks, you'd think life here then was just one long
midsummer serenade. He declares it was always sunshine, that the air
wasn't like the air anywhere else--that, as he remembers it, there
always seemed to be gold-dust in the air. I doubt it! I think it doesn't
seem to be duller air to him now just on account of having a little soot
in it sometimes, but probably because he was twenty years younger then.
It seems to me the gold-dust he thinks was here is just his being young
that he remembers. I think it was just youth. It is pretty pleasant
to be young, isn't it?" She laughed absently, then appeared to become
wistful. "I wonder if we really do enjoy it as much as we'll look back
and think we did! I don't suppose so. Anyhow, for my part I feel as if
I must be missing something about it, somehow, because I don't ever seem
to be thinking about what's happening at the present moment; I'm always
looking forward to something--thinking about things that will happen
when I'm older."