From his window McTeague saw them in front of the
stalls, gloved and veiled and daintily shod, the subservient provision
men at their elbows, scribbling hastily in the order books. They all
seemed to know one another, these grand ladies from the fashionable
avenue. Meetings took place here and there; a conversation was begun;
others arrived; groups were formed; little impromptu receptions were
held before the chopping blocks of butchers' stalls, or on the sidewalk,
around boxes of berries and fruit.
From noon to evening the population of the street was of a mixed
character. The street was busiest at that time; a vast and prolonged
murmur arose--the mingled shuffling of feet, the rattle of wheels, the
heavy trundling of cable cars. At four o'clock the school children
once more swarmed the sidewalks, again disappearing with surprising
suddenness. At six the great homeward march commenced; the cars were
crowded, the laborers thronged the sidewalks, the newsboys chanted the
evening papers. Then all at once the street fell quiet; hardly a soul
was in sight; the sidewalks were deserted. It was supper hour. Evening
began; and one by one a multitude of lights, from the demoniac glare of
the druggists' windows to the dazzling blue whiteness of the electric
globes, grew thick from street corner to street corner.
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