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Flags and handkerchiefs waved from the windows and housetops, and all was bustle and commotion, notwithstanding the continual booming of cannon at Sumter and on Sullivan's Island. Every minute or two a shell would go whizzing overhead or crashing through the brick walls of the buildings.
And at that moment the wife of the Governor cheered again, and again the people echoed her, and even the women on the housetops made bold to take up her cry with their cooing ululation. The playing had ceased, the spell had dissolved, Naomi's fingers had fallen from the harp, her head had dropped into her breast, and with a sigh she had sunk forward on to her face.
Every word of praise was read aloud on the housetops, so to speak, by happy Rose; every adverse criticism was hotly disputed; and the whole family was in a great state of pleasant excitement over this unexpectedly successful first flight of the Ugly Duckling, now generally considered by his relatives as the most promising young swan of the flock.
A light, grey fog hung over the background of the streets, and the line of the housetops was almost lost in the morose shadows that fell from a soot-coloured sky. Here and there a chimney-stack or the sharp spire of a church tore the muslin-like curtains of descending mist; and vague as the mist were her thoughts.
At last, a forest of graceful needles, shimmering in the amber sunlight, rose slowly above the pygmy housetops, as one sometimes sees, in the far horizon, a gilded and pinnacled mass of cloud lift itself above the waste of waves, at sea, the Cathedral! We knew it in a moment. Half of that night, and all of the next day, this architectural autocrat was our sole object of interest.
The short winter's day had brought an early twilight to the place, and the woman was closely veiled, but the moment she spoke North recognized her, for there was something in the mellow full-throated quality of her speech which belonged only to one voice that he knew. "Mrs. Langham! Evelyn!" he exclaimed, starting back in dismay. "Hush, Jack, you needn't call it from the housetops!"
For a moment I forgot Harriet and the agent, I forgot myself, I even forgot the book on my knee everything but that hour in the past a view of shimmering hot housetops, the heat and dust and noise of an August evening in the city, the dumb weariness of it all, the loneliness, the longing for green fields; and then these great lines of Wordsworth, read for the first time, flooding in upon me: "Great God!
The streets, the balconies, and the very housetops were crowded with gazers. All the steeples from the Abbey to the Tower sent forth a joyous din. The proclamation was repeated, with sound of trumpet, in front of the Royal Exchange, amidst the shouts of the citizens. In the evening every window from Whitechapel to Piccadilly was lighted up.
Judith pulled herself free from Elinor's circling arms and made for the door, pausing on the threshold. "As if I'd publish it on the housetops!" she cried in infinite disdain. "It's plain you aren't much up in detective stories."
Get a dozen boys to hold their noses, and then in a high key imitate the gamut performed by several festive cats as they prowl over the housetops on a quiet night, and you have Greek, Armenian or Turkish chanting and singing to perfection. There is not the first conception of music in the souls of these barbarians. Behind this choir came four men carrying the open coffin.
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