midday
Now he felt kenspeckle , not in any suit of material clothes but in a droll sense of nakedness . He had told his love and adventure in a place where walls heard and windows peered , and a rumour out of the ordinary went on the wind into every close and soared straight to the highest tenement -- even to the garret rooms . He felt that the women at the wells , very busy , as they pretended , over their boynes and stoups , would whisper about him as he passed , without looking up from their occupation . Down the street towards the church there was scarcely any one to be seen except the children out for the mid-day airing from Brooks 's school , and old Brooks himself going over to Kate Bell 's for his midday waters with a daundering step as if he had no special object , and might as readily be found making for the quay or the coffee-house . The children were noisy in the playground , the boys playing at port-the-helm , a foolish pastime borrowed in its parlance and its rule from the seafarers who frequented the harbour , and the girls more sedately played peeveral-al and I dree I dree ! dropped it , their voices in a sweat unison chanting , yet with a sorrow in the cadence . Up the street some men sat on the Cross steps waiting the coming of the ferry-boat from Kilcatrine , for it was the day of the weekly paper .