The street was not a common one; there was interest, that is
feature, in the shadowy front of almost each of its old houses.
Not a few of them wore, indeed, something like a human
expression, the look of having both known and suffered. From many
a porch, and many a latticed oriel, a long shadow stretched
eastward, like a death flag streaming in a wind unfelt of the
body--or a fluttering leaf, ready to yield, and flit away, and
add one more to the mound of blackness gathering on the horizon's
edge. It was the main street of an old country town, dwindled by
the rise of larger and more prosperous places, but holding and
exercising a charm none of them would ever gain.

Some of the oldest of its houses, most of them with more than one
projecting story, stood about the middle of the street. The
central and oldest of these was a draper's shop. The windows of
the ground-floor encroached a little on the pavement, to which
they descended very close, for the floor of the shop was lower
than the street. But, although they had glass on three oriel
sides, they were little used for the advertising of the stores
within. A few ribbons and gay handkerchiefs, mostly of cotton,
for the eyes of the country people on market-days, formed the
chief part of their humble show. The door was wide and very low,
the upper half of it of glass--old, and bottle-colored; and its
threshold was a deep step down into the shop. As a place for
purchases it might not to some eyes look promising, but both the
ladies and the housekeepers of Testbridge knew that rarely could
they do better in London itself than at the shop of Turnbull and
Marston, whether variety, quality, or price, was the point in
consideration. And, whatever the first impression concerning it,