This roof often let in rain enough to fill the pits worn in
the paving-stones by the feet of gossiping generations; and the whole
was wisely demolished a few years back to make place for a Working
Men's Institute--a red building, where they take in all the chief
London newspapers. Nevertheless I have, in some moods, caught myself
hankering after the old shelter, where the talk was unchartered
always, and where no notices were suspended against smoking; and I
know it used to be worth visiting on dirty evenings about the time of
the Equinox, when the town-folk assembled to watch the high tide and
the chances of its flooding the streets about the quay.
Early one September afternoon, about two years before its destruction,
a small group of watermen, a woman or two, and a fringe of small
children were gathered in the fish-market around a painter and his
easel. The painter--locally known as Seven-an'-Six--was a white-haired
little man, with a clean-shaven face, a complexion of cream and
roses, a high unwrinkled brow, and blue eyes that beamed an engaging
trustfulness on his fellow-creatures, of whom he stood ready to paint
any number at seven shillings and sixpence a head.
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