A few had shallow verandas that relieved their bareness, but the rest were frankly ugly, and in some the front was carried up level with the roof-ridge, giving them a harsh squareness of outline.

A plank sidewalk, raised a foot or two above the ground, ran along the street, where the black soil was torn by wagon wheels.
There was nothing attractive about the settlement, and Charnock had once been repelled by its dreariness.

He, however, liked society, and as the settlement was the only center of human intercourse, had acquired the habit of spending time there that ought to have been devoted to his farm.

He enjoyed a game of pool, and to sit on the hotel veranda, bantering the loungers, was a pleasant change from driving the plow or plodding through the dust that rolled about the harrows.

For all that, he knitted his brows as his light wagon lurched past the Chinese laundry and the poolroom in the next block.