—in the broad street where the shops are. At that hour there were many people moving about on foot and in every sort of vehicle, short of brougham and landaus. There was the smart couple in a high buckboard, just out for a morning drive; there was the elderly farmer with his buggy or his hooded cart—his wife seated beside him, with her queer, sad, winter-blighted face, and her decent, but dusty black frock;—there was the young farmer 'sport' driving his favourite trotting horse in a sulky. And of pedestrians there was no end. A smart party bent on a day's excursion by sea came down the board walk, brilliant in perfectly new blue and white serge, with bits of splendid orange and red here and there, fresh faces, light hearts, great appetites, and the most trifling of cares—the care for trifles themselves. Fanny nodded and smiled, and was smiled at, while Lawrence attempted to lift his soft woollen cap from his head with some sort of grace—a thing impossible, as men who wear soft woollen caps well know. But the air seemed lighter and brighter for so much youth laughing in it.
