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So much of the local life appears upon the street; there is so much gossip from house to house, and the talk is always such a resonant clamoring; the women, bareheaded, or with a shawl folded over the head and caught beneath the chin with the hand, have such a contented down-at-heel aspect, shuffling from door to door, or lounging, arms akimbo, among the cats and poultry at their own thresholds, that one beholding it all might well fancy himself upon some Italian calle or vicolo.
And since this was a pleasant-spoken man and intelligent though with a somewhat down-at-heel look besides being a stranger to the town, Mahony impulsively took him home to dinner. In the evening they sat and talked. The visitor, whose name was Wakefield, was considerably Mahony's senior. By his own account he had had but a rough time of it for the past couple of years.
Among this circle of down-at-heel eccentrics there was a single figure whose distinction and respectability stood out in striking contrast from the rest that of Maupertuis, who had been, since 1745, the President of the Academy of Sciences at Berlin.
Loafing in the streets and doorways are tall, well-built men and women, but they had a rather down-at-heel air, for their fortunes were at a low ebb when I was in Chengtu. The military service they once rendered had been displaced by the new modern trained troops, and three years ago their monthly rice pension of four taels, about $2.50, was cut down by a viceroy bidding for popular support.
Mary reddened, but she laughed too, then said apologetically: "It sounds the most fearful snobbery to even mention class distinctions in these wilds, where the only aristocracy that counts is nobility of endeavour. But I could not reckon myself that woman's superior, Father, because under the same circumstances I might have been even more untidy and down-at-heel than she is."
In the morning, when the man picked up overnight had been newly dismissed, all the courtesans of the quarter were wont to come marketing here, their eyes heavy with sleep, their feet in old down-at-heel shoes and themselves full of the weariness and ill humor entailed by a night of boredom.
And again the woman anxiously and actively fingered the mattress and added up in her mind and bargained with the old, unclean man. All the while, the young man stood by, shamefaced and down-at-heel, submitting. 'Look, said Birkin, 'there is a pretty chair. 'Charming! cried Ursula. 'Oh, charming.
Further down the road, a gaily coloured lamp caught her eye, the lettering on which read "Gellybrand's Select Dancing Academy. Terms to suit all pockets. Inquire within." Mavis was certain that the name of which she was in search was none other than Poulter: she looked about her and wondered if it were possible for such a down-at-heel neighbourhood to support more than one dancing academy.
A man his face close-pressed against them peered through the interwoven iron rods from within. Jaimihr, in a rose-pink pugree still, but not at all the swaggering cavalier who pranced, high-booted, through the streets a down-at-heel prince, looking slovenly and heavy-eyed from too much opium sat in a long chair under the cloister which faced the barred stone door.
Her rusty black, her cheap stockings, her down-at-heel shoes, and her faded hat combined to present a picture of poverty. Indeed, the very fact of the neglect of her dress was increasing evidence that her vision was dim, for surely she would not go forth with the rent in the elbow of her blouse. Did she know that it was torn?
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