“The snow is going now,” I said, with a smile.
He laughed a queer, hard little sparrow laugh, and looked up and down the street. The high rounded snow banks were no longer white and beautiful, but grimy and soot-laden, and they were weeping rivers of dusky tears. The icy sidewalks were so slippery with standing water that ladies and children went into the
street, but it was not much better there, and often they lost their rubbers, which went sailing down the streams like little black boats.
However, up in the blue heaven, the sun was shining, and there was warmth in it, for this was February and spring would soon be with us.
I looked up and down the street. It seemed very quaint to me, and I stretched out my neck to find out whether I could see the end of it. I could not. It went away up, up toward a hill with trees on it, and, as I found out later, away down south to a big lake where the wharves are, and the ships and the railroads, and the noise and the traffic, and also a lovely island that I had heard the Martins say was a fine place for a summer outing.
The sparrow was watching me, and at last he said, “How do you like it out here?”
“Very much,” I said. “It is so big and wonderful, and there are so many houses standing away back from the street. I thought there were no houses in the world but just the Martins’, and those I could see from their windows.”
He smiled at me, but said nothing, and I went on, “And the trees are so enormous and
so friendly. I love to see them reaching their gaunt arms across the street to shake hands. Our fir trees in the bird-room will seem very small to me now.”
He shook his little dull-colored head. “Alas! the neighborhood is not what it used to be. A few years ago all these were private houses. Now boarding houses and lodging houses and even shops are creeping up from town.”