bustle--you have the stillness of the country without its birds and
flowers. The reader will please to bring before him a quiet street in
the quiet country town of C------, in a quiet evening in quiet June; the
picture is not mirthful--two young dogs are playing in the street, one
old dog is watching by a newly-painted door. A few ladies of middle age
move noiselessly along the pavement, returning home to tea: they wear
white muslin dresses, green spencers a little faded, straw poke bonnets
with green or coffee-coloured gauze veils. By twos and threes they have
disappeared within the thresholds of small neat houses, with little
railings, inclosing little green plots. Threshold, house, railing, and
plot, each as like to the other as are those small commodities called
"nest-tables," which, "even as a broken mirror multiplies," summon to
the bewildered eye countless iterations of one four-legged individual.
Paradise Place was a set of nest houses.

A cow had passed through the streets with a milkwoman behind; two young
and gay shopmen "looking after the gals," had reconnoitred the street,
and vanished in despair. The twilight advanced--but gently; and though
a star or two were up, the air was still clear. At the open window of
one of the tenements in this street sat Alice Darvil. She had been
working (that pretty excuse to women for thinking), and as the thoughts
grew upon her, and the evening waned, the work had fallen upon her knee,
and her hands dropped mechanically on her lap. Her profile was turned
towards the street; but without moving her head or changing her
attitude, her eyes glanced from time to time to her little girl, who
nestled on the ground beside her, tired with play; and wondering,
perhaps, why she was not already in bed, seemed as tranquil as the young
mother herself. And sometimes Alice's eyes filled with tears--and then
she sighed, as if to sigh the tears away. But poor Alice, if she
grieved, hers was now a silent and a patient grief.