thither with their loads of fish, and so struggled back to the avenue
which ran along the top of all the wharves. The water of the docks
was of a livid turbidity, which teemed with the gelatinous globes of
the sun-fish; and people were rowing about there in pleasure-boats,
and sailors on floats were painting the hulls of the black ships. The
faces of the men they met were red and sunburned mostly,--not with
the sunburn of the fields, but of the sea; these men lurched in their
gait with an uncouth heaviness, yet gave them way kindly enough;
but certain dull-eyed, frowzy-headed women seemed to push purposely
against her grandfather, and one of them swore at Lydia for taking
up all the sidewalk with her bundles. There were such dull eyes and
slattern heads at the open windows of the shabby houses; and there
were gaunt, bold-faced young girls who strolled up and down the
pavements, bonnetless and hatless, and chatted into the windows, and
joked with other such girls whom they met. Suddenly a wild outcry rose
from the swarming children up one of the intersecting streets, where
a woman was beating a small boy over the head with a heavy stick:
the boy fell howling and writhing to the ground, and the cruel blows
still rained upon him, till another woman darted from an open door
and caught the child up with one hand, and with the other wrenched the
stick away and flung it into the street. No words passed, and there
was nothing to show whose child the victim was; the first woman walked
off, and while the boy rubbed his head and arms, and screamed with the
pain, the other children, whose sports had been scarcely interrupted,
were shouting and laughing all about him again.

"Grandfather," said Lydia faintly, "let us go down here, and rest a
moment in the shade. I'm almost worn out." She pointed to the open and
quiet space at the side of the lofty granite warehouse which they had
reached.