She said she knew he would be anxious about his work; he protested that he could take it with him to any distance within a few hours, but she would not be persuaded.

She would rather he stayed; the effect would be better with Mr.Fulkerson; they could make excursions, and they could all get off a week or two to the seashore near Boston--the only real seashore--in August.

The excursions were practically confined to a single day at Coney Island; and once they got as far as Boston on the way to the seashore near Boston; that is, Mrs.March and the children went; an editorial exigency kept March at the last moment.

The Boston streets seemed very queer and clean and empty to the children, and the buildings little; in the horse-cars the Boston faces seemed to arraign their mother with a down-drawn severity that made her feel very guilty.
She knew that this was merely the Puritan mask, the cast of a dead civilization, which people of very amiable and tolerant minds were doomed to wear, and she sighed to think that less than a year of the heterogeneous gayety of New York should have made her afraid of it.

The sky seemed cold and gray; the east wind, which she had always thought so delicious in summer, cut her to the heart.