The rough river looked chill under a sky of windy clouds, and he felt out of season, both as to the summer travel, and as to the journey he was making.
The summer of life as well as the summer of that year was past.

Better return to his own radiator in his flat on Stuyvesant Square; to the great ugly brutal town which, if it was not home to him, was as much home to him as to any one.

A longing for New York welled up his heart, which was perhaps really a wish to be at work again.

He said he must keep this from his wife, who seemed not very well, and whom he must try to cheer up when he returned to the hotel.
But they had not a very joyous afternoon, and the evening was no gayer.
They said that if they had not ordered their letters sent to Dusseldorf they believed they should push on to Holland without stopping; and March would have liked to ask, Why not push on to America?
But he forbore, and he was afterwards glad that he had done so.
In the morning their spirits rose with the sun, though the sun got up behind clouds as usual; and they were further animated by the imposition which the landlord practised upon them.

After a distinct and repeated agreement as to the price of their rooms he charged them twice as much, and then made a merit of throwing off two marks out of the twenty he had plundered them of.
"Now I see," said Mrs.March, on their way down to the boat, "how fortunate it was that we baked his clock.