The sky was gloomy, and
the shortest streets were choked up with a dingy mist, half thawed,
halF frozen, whose heavier particles descended in a shower of sooty
atoms, as if all the chimneys in Great Britain had, by one consent,
caught fire, and were blazing away to their dear heart's content. There
was nothing very cheerful in the climate or the town, and yet was there
an air of cheerfulness abroad that the dearest summer 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.
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