er air and brightest summer sun
might have endeavoured to diffuse in vain.

For the people who were shovelling away on the housetops were jovial and
full of glee, calling out to one another from the parapets, and now and
then exchanging a facetious snowball--better-natured missile far than
many a wordy jest--laughing heartily if it went right, and not less
heartily if it went wrong. The poulterers' shops were still half open,
and the fruiterers' were radiant in their glory. There were great,
round, potbellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of
jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the
street in their apoplectic opulence.

There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish onions, shining in
the fatness of their growth like Spanish friars, and winking, from their
shelves, in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced
demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples,
clustering high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes,
made, in the shop-keeper's benevolence, to dangle from conspicuous
hooks, that people's mouths might water gratis as they passed; there
were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance,
ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep
through withered leaves; there were Norfolk biffins, squab and swarthy,
setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great
compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching
to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner. The very gold
and silver fish, set forth among these choice fruits in a bowl, though
members of a dull and stagnant-blooded race, appeared to know that there
was something going on; and, to a fish, went gasping round and round
their little world in slow and passionless excitement.

The grocers'! oh, the grocers'! nearly closed, with perhaps two shutters
down, or one; but through those gaps such glimpses! It was not alone
that the scales descending on the counter made a merry sound, or that
the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or that the canisters
were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or even that the blended
scents of tea and coffee were so grateful to the nose, or even that the
raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so extremely white, the
sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the other spices so delicious,
the candied fruits so caked and spotted with m