She rather groped
for his meaning, but she was perfectly certain of her own.
"I guess pa's all right," declared his sister, "as long as he is left
alone and not interfered with."
The evening lights doubled and trebled--long rows of them appeared
overhead at incalculable altitudes. The gongs of the cable cars clanged
more and more imperiously as the crowds surged in great numbers round
grip and trailer. The night life of the town began to bestir itself, and
little Rosy, from her conspicuous place, beamed with a bright intentness
upon its motley spectacle, careless of where her smiles might fall. For
her the immodest theatrical poster drooped in the windows of saloons, or
caught a transient hold upon the hoardings of uncompleted buildings;
brazen blare and gaudy placards (disgusting rather than indecent) invited
the passer-by into cheap museums and music-halls; all the unclassifiable
riff-raff that is spawned by a great city leered from corners, or
slouched along the edge of the gutters, or stood in dark doorways, or
sold impossible rubbish in impossible dialects wherever the public
indulgence permitted a foothold.
To Rosy's mother all this involved no impropriety. Eliza Marshall's
Chicago was the Chicago of 1860, an Arcadia which, in some dim and
inexplicable way, had remained for her an Arcadia still--bigger, noisier,
richer, yet different only in degree, and not essentially in kind. She
herself had traversed these same streets in the days when they were the
streets of a mere town, Fane, accompanying her mother's courses as a
child, had seen the town develop into a city.
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