tions, the page set forth on his way to the
church.

The morning had been fine for November; but before midday the clouds had
gathered, the rain had begun, and the inveterate fog of the season had
closed dingily over the wet streets, far and near. The garden in the
middle of Baregrove Square--with its close-cut turf, its vacant beds,
its bran-new rustic seats, its withered young trees that had not yet
grown as high as the railings around them--seemed to be absolutely
rotting away in yellow mist and softly-steady rain, and was deserted
even by the cats. All blinds were drawn down for the most part over all
windows; what light came from the sky came like light seen through
dusty glass; the grim brown hue of the brick houses looked more
dirtily mournful than ever; the smoke from the chimney-pots was lost
mysteriously in deepening superincumbent fog; the muddy gutters gurgled;
the heavy rain-drops dripped into empty areas audibly. No object great
or small, no out-of-door litter whatever appeared anywhere, to break
the dismal uniformity of line and substance in the perspective of
the square. No living being moved over the watery pavement, save the
solitary Snoxell. He plodded on into a Crescent, and still the awful
Sunday solitude spread grimly humid all around him. He next entered a
street with some closed shops in it; and here, at last, some
consoling signs of human life attracted his attention. He now saw the
crossing-sweeper of the district (off duty till church came out) smoking
a pipe under the covered way that led to a mews. He detected, through
half closed shutters, a chemist's apprentice yawing over a large book.
He passed a navigator, an ostler, and two costermongers wandering
wearily backwards and forwards before a closed public-house door. He
heard the heavy _clop clop_ of thickly-booted feet advancing behind him,
and a stern voice growling, "Now then! be off with you, or you'll get
locked up!"--and, looking round, saw an orange-girl, guilty of having
obstructed an empty pavement by sitting on the curb-stone, driven along
before a policeman, who was followed admiringly by a ragged boy gnawing
a piece of orange-peel. Having delayed a moment to watch this Sunday
procession of three with melancholy curiosity as it moved by him,
Snoxell was about to turn the corner of a street which led directly to
the church, when a shrill series of cries in a child's voice struck on
his ear and stopped his progress immediately.