Round the Block | Page 7

glass over the fireplace, and not wholly displeased with his appearance.
"Another thought strikes me," said Overtop, explosively. "It's nearly
half an hour to sunset. I am impatient to begin my acquaintance with
our fellow citizens--our future friends, if I may so call them. Let us
look out of the windows, and see what the excellent people are doing.
Perhaps it may interest even a recluse and bookworm like you."
"Nonsense," rejoined Marcus Wilkeson. "There's no curiosity in my
composition."
And yet, when his two companions stood at the window of the little
back parlor, pressing their noses against the glass, and looking out, he
could not resist the temptation to join them, although he thought proper
to punch them in the ribs, and call them a pair of inquisitive puppies, by
way of showing how much he was superior to the great human
infirmity.
CHAPTER III.
PEEPS.
The uniform row of houses on the other side of a dead waste of snow,
to which the attention of the three friends was ardently directed,
promised, at first sight, a poor return of instruction and entertainment.
The rear view presented one dull stretch of bricks irregularly set even
in those houses which displayed imposing fronts of brown stone. The
blinds were of a faded green color, and broken. The stoops, the doors
opening on them, and the steps leading down to the dirty, sodden snow,
had a generic look of cheapness and frailty. "Whatever the censorious

critic might say of the front, he could not charge the rear with false
pretences; for there was apparent, all over it, an utter indifference to the
opinions of mankind. Perhaps because the owners of the houses did not
expect mankind to study their property from that point of view.
"Say!" was Mr. Fayette Overtop's first remark, after a moment's
observation; "do not those rustic fences on the roofs remind you of the
sweet, fresh country in summer time?" Mr. Overtop alluded to the
barriers which are erected to keep people from getting into each other's
houses, and which are scaled not without difficulty even by cats.
Neither of his friends answering this remark except by a quiet,
incredulous smile, Overtop continued, a little pettishly:
"And you really mean to tell me that that pastoral object, happily
introduced on the roofs of houses, does not recall the green fields,
daisies, babbling brooks, and cloudless skies of early boyhood?
Humbug!" The speaker flattened his nose still more against the glass by
way of emphasis.
"You look for beauties among the chimney pots, while I search for
them in back-parlor windows," said Matthew Maltboy. "Observe where
I throw my eye now."
Mr. Maltboy threw his eye toward a house near the middle of the block.
His companions followed it, and saw a tall girl with prodigious skirts
standing at a window, and looking, as they thought, at them. The view
which she obtained was evidently not satisfactory, for with her
handkerchief she wiped off the moisture from several of the panes; and,
when the glass was clear to her liking, shook out the folds of her dress,
and peered forth again, this time more decidedly, at the window
occupied by the three friends. Her use of the handkerchief was not lost
upon Maltboy, who straightway pulled out his extensive cambric, and
polished up their window too. This improvement of the medium of
vision on both sides, enabled the three friends to form some idea of the
tall girl's personal charms. Her figure was straight; her hair was black;
her eyes were brilliant; her complexion was healthy; she exhibited
jewelry in her ears, on her neck, her bosom, her wrists, and her fingers;

her dress gave her a great deal of trouble, as she leaned forward to look
out.
"Charming, is she not?" said Maltboy.
"Hard to say, at this distance," returned Overtop, who, feeling
neglected in the matter of the rustic fence, was controversially
disposed.
"You may find it so," said Maltboy; "but as for me, the flash of her
eyes--there, now, for instance!--is convincing enough."
"Perhaps you have seen her before," remarked Marcus Wilkeson.
"Perhaps," was that gentleman's answer, implying, by his accent and
accompanying wink, that he had seen her repeatedly.
"And said nothing about her to us, you inveterate humbug," added
Marcus.
Mr. Maltboy felt the compliment conveyed in the word "humbug"--as
most people do when that accusation of shrewdness and deep
dissembling is brought against them--and smiled.
"I confess," he replied, as he polished the window simultaneously with
the performance of that process across the way, "I confess I have
noticed her several times; but what was the use of mentioning it to a
pair of woman haters like you?"
His two companions laughed pleasantly, thereby expressing their
gratification at the return compliment involved in