a little street.
I watched them until they went out of my sight round a corner; but the
two silent, leisurely figures, moving in their black and their veils
along an empty highway, come back to me often in the pictures of my
thoughts; come back most often, indeed, as the human part of what my
memory sees when it turns to look at Kings Port. For, first, it sees
the blue frame of quiet sunny water, and the white town within its frame
beneath the clear, untainted air; and then it sees the high-slanted
roofs, red with their old corrugated tiles, and the tops of leafy
enclosures dipping below sight among quaint and huddled quadrangles;
and, next, the quiet houses standing in their separate grounds, their
narrow ends to the street and their long, two-storied galleries open
to the south, but their hushed windows closed as if against the prying,
restless Present that must not look in and disturb the motionless
memories which sit brooding behind these shutters; and between all these
silent mansions lie the narrow streets, the quiet, empty streets, along
which, as my memory watches them, pass the two ladies silently, in their
black and their veils, moving between high, mellow-colored garden walls
over whose tops look the oleanders, the climbing roses, and all the
taller flowers of the gardens.

And if Mrs. Gregory and Mrs. Weguelin seemed to me at moments as narrow
as those streets, they also seemed to me as lovely as those serene
gardens; and if I had smiled at their prejudices, I had loved their
innocence, their deep innocence, of the poisoned age which has succeeded
their own; and if I had wondered this day at their powers for cruelty, I
wondered the next day at the glimpse I had of their kindness. For during
a pelting cold rainstorm, as I sat and shivered in a Royal Street car,
waiting for it to start upon its north-bound course, the house-door
opposite which we stood at the end of the track opened, and Mrs.
Weguelin's head appeared, nodding to the conductor as she sent her black
servant out with hot coffee for him! He took off his hat, and smiled,
and thanked her; and when we had started and I, the sole passenger in
the chilly car, asked him about this, he said with native pride: "The
ladies always watches out for us conductors in stormy weather, sir.
That's Mistress Weguelin St. Michael, one of our finest." And then he
gave me careful directions how to find a shop that I was seeking.

Think of this happening in New York! T