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Sheldon in the streets of his native town, and had almost blown him off the door-steps of his kindred. So it is scarcely strange if he returned to town looking none the better for his excursion. He looked considerably the worse for his week's absence, the old Yorkshire-woman said, as she waited upon him while he ate a chop and drank two large cups of very strong tea. Mr.
Moss in her "flying round" evolutions; next dragging off the mat so Betty could brush the door-steps, or inspecting Bab's dish-washing by standing on his hind-legs to survey the table with a critical air.
Where he went to he hardly knew. He remembered wandering through dimly lit streets, past gaunt, black-shadowed archways and evil-looking houses. Women with hoarse voices and harsh laughter had called after him. Drunkards had reeled by, cursing and chattering to themselves like monstrous apes. He had seen grotesque children huddled upon door-steps, and heard shrieks and oaths from gloomy courts.
The gentility of our neighbor suffered a blight from the unwholesome vicinity of McGinnis Court. This court was a kind of cul de sac that, on being penetrated, discovered a primitive people living in a state of barbarous freedom, and apparently spending the greater portion of their lives on their own door-steps.
Very few of us lived upon carpeted floors, but soft green grass stretched away from our door-steps, all golden with dandelions in spring. Those dandelion fields were like another heaven dropped down upon the earth, where our feet wandered at will among the stars. What need had we of luxurious upholstery, when we could step out into such splendor, from the humblest door?
'That's the best thing I've heard of late, he said, shaking Lydiard's hand on the door-steps. 'Ah! You're Commander Beauchamp; I think I know you. I've seen you on a platform, cried a fresh-faced man in decent clothes, halting on his way along the pavement; 'and if you were in your uniform, you damned Republican dog!
It is most difficult to drive at all the street is so narrow, and the door-steps of the houses jut out so into the narrow space. The horses, too, hired at Lucca, twenty miles away, are tired, poor beasts, and reeking with the heat. They can hardly keep their feet upon the rugged, slippery stones that pave the dirty alley.
Behind the fountain was a sort of cupboard suggestive of the Arabian Nights, which Janet had never read from which, occasionally, the fat proprietor emerged bearing Turkish coffee or long Turkish pipes. When not thus occupied the proprietor carried a baby. The street swarmed with babies, and mothers nursed them on the door-steps.
This was a poor country, miserable country; but in his own the houses were all of marble, pink marble, with mahogany door-steps. "Is that so?" Lena would say, raising her limpid eyes to the dark velvety ones that were bent so softly on her. "Oh, fine! fine!" said Franci. "Never I eat from a china dish in my country; silver, all silver! Only the pigs eat from china.
Fifty yards farther on, a stout, red-faced, elderly gentleman was observed to look out at the street door and frown at things in general. "Have your door-steps cleaned, sir?" asked the lively rough, taking the shovel off his shoulder. "Do it cheap, sir," said the lively rough. "No!" said the elderly gentleman, with a sort of snapping look, as he turned his gaze up the street and then down it.
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