It started raining again the next afternoon, the kind of rain that makes the street shimmer like it has been newly polished. I was standing by the front table arranging a set of hand-stitched scarves when I saw them. Not all of them from yesterday, but enough that I recognized the faces, the way their coats clung damp to their shoulders.

The signs were gone this time, though a few carried folded pieces of cardboard under their arms. They didn’t chant. They stood together under the narrow ...