Page:Tales of Three Cities (Boston, James R. Osgood & Co., 1884).djvu/354

342 a somewhat rigid, anxious look. People who met her in Beacon Street missed something from her face. It was her usual confidence in the clearness of human duty; and some of her friends explained the change by saying that she was disappointed about Florimond,—she was afraid he was not particularly liked.

 VII.

the first of March this young man had received a good many optical impressions, and had noted in water-colors several characteristic winter effects. He had perambulated Boston in every direction, he had even extended his researches to the suburbs; and if his eye had been curious, his eye was now almost satisfied. He perceived that even amid the simple civilization of New England there was material for the naturalist; and in Washington Street of a winter's afternoon, it came home to him that it was a fortunate thing the impressionist was not exclusively preoccupied with the beautiful. He became familiar with the slushy streets, crowded with thronging pedestrians and obstructed horse-cars, bordered with strange, promiscuous shops, which seemed at once violent and indifferent, overhung with snowbanks from the housetops; the avalanche that detached itself at intervals, fell with an enormous thud amid the dense processions of women, made for a moment