The two domestic establishments were a few minutes away from the shops, facing each other diagonally across the square.
They were small, three-roomed houses, without basements, the ground floor window in each being filled up with a black gauze blind (an invariable index of gentility) which allowed the occupants to see all that was passing outside, but confronted gazers with their own rejections.

Passers-by postured at these mirrors, twisting moustaches perkily, or giving coquettish pats to bonnets, unwitting of the grinning inhabitants.

Most of the doors were ajar, wintry as the air was: for the Zachariah Squareites lived a good deal on the door-step.

In the summer, the housewives sat outside on chairs and gossiped and knitted, as if the sea foamed at their feel, and wrinkled good-humored old men played nap on tea-trays.

Some of the doors were blocked below with sliding barriers of wood, a sure token of infants inside given to straying.