To-day, in the drizzling mist, the place was horribly depressing. Falk
plunged down into Bridge Street as into a damp stuffy well. Here some of
the houses had once been fine; there were porticoes and deep-set doors and
bow-windows, making them poor relations of the handsome benevolent
Georgian houses in Orange Street. The street, top-tilting down to the
river, was slovenly with dirt and carelessness. Many of the windows were
broken, their panes stuffed with paper; washing hung from house to house.
The windows that were not broken were hermetically sealed and filled with
grimy plants and ferns, and here and there a photograph of an embarrassed
sailor or a smiling married couple or an overdressed young woman placed
face outward to the street. Bridge Street tumbled with a dirty absent-
mindedness into Pennicent Street. This, the main thoroughfare of Seatown,
must have been once a handsome cobbled walk by the river-side. The houses,
more than in Bridge Street, showed by their pillared doorways and their
faded red brick that they had once been gentlemen's residences, with
gardens, perhaps, running to the river's edge and a fine view of the
meadows and woods beyond.
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