Ahead of us a lattice opened and two faces looked out. In fact two girls leaned out. Their type was manifest: well-housed, well clad, well fed, luxurious, loose-living, light-hearted minxes.
One was plump, full-breasted, merry-faced, with intensely black and glossy hair, a brunette complexion and in her cheeks a great deal of brilliant color, which I afterwards found was all her own, but which at first I took for paint. She wore a gown of a yellow almost as intense as the garb of the priests of Cybele in the Gardens of Verus. Its insistent yellow was intensified and set off by a girdle of black silk cords, braided into a complicated pattern, and by shoulder-knots of black silk, with dangling fringes, and by black silk lacings along her smocked sleeves.
Her companion was tall and slender and melancholy faced, her hair a dull reddish-gold or golden-red, her face without color and a bit freckled, her gown of pale blue.
The black-haired girl called:
"You've had a long ride and you deserve recreation and refreshment. Come in. We don't know you two, but we have entertained couriers before this. This is the place for you."
"Ah, my dear," Agathemer replied, "we not only have had a long ride but we may have to set out on a longer tomorrow, and you know the proverb:
"'Light lovers are seldom long lopers.'"
"If you were too much disinclined to being light lovers," the girl retorted, "you'd never be strolling down this street. Come in!"
"My dear," said Agathemer, "we'd love to come in. But remember the proverb:
"'Gay girls are not good for great gallopers.'"