He perceived
that it could never have been fashionable, like Bolingbroke Street
or Beacon; the houses were narrow, and their doors opened from
little, cavernous arches let into the brick fronts, and they stood
flush upon the pavement. The sidewalks were full of people, mostly
girls walking up and down; at the corners young fellows lounged, and
there were groups before the cigar stores and the fruit stalls,
which were open. It was not very cold yet, and the children who
swarmed upon the low door-steps were bareheaded and often summer-
clad. The street was not nearly so well kept as the streets on the
Back Bay that Lemuel was more used to, but he could see that it was
not a rowdy street either. He looked up at a lamp on the first
corner he came to, and read Pleasant Avenue on it; then he said that
the witch was in it. He dramatised a scene of meeting those girls,
and was very glib in it, and they were rather shy, and Miss Dudley
kept behind Amanda Grier, who nudged her with her elbow when Lemuel
said he had come round to see if anybody had robbed them of their
books on the way home after he left them last night.
But all the time, as he hurried along to the next corner, he looked
fearfully to the right and left. Presently he began to steal guilty
glances at the numbers of the houses. He said to himself that he
would see what kind of a looking house they did live in, any way.
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