Page:The Blind Bow-Boy (IA blindbowboy00vanv).pdf/198



Greyness was the characteristic tone of Provincetown. The houses were grey; the sky and the sand and the sea often seemed grey. Even the trees, the leaves powdered with dust, assumed a greyish sagegreen tinge. One long curving street, fringed with tiny wooden cottages, ran along the shore. These little houses, many of which were surrounded by hedges of untrimmed privet, sprinkled untidily with white blossoms, indifferently faced the road or the ocean. Tods of ivy and clematis, blue and white, draped the painted boards, and in the gardens dahlias, cosmos, zinnias, petunias, verbenas, portulaca, asters, and golden-glow grew in great irregular clumps. The street culminated in two landmarks, a church-spire, that might or might not have been designed by Sir Christopher Wren, and a tall Italian tower of brick, the Pilgrim Monument. In the harbour a warship rode at anchor, and there were fleets of rude fishing-smacks, among which the smug white sails of pleasure sloops looked as uncomfortable and awkward as a Londoner with morning coat and top hat would look in the midst of Shoreditch. The shore was lined with quaint, dilapidated