Their presence seemed as incongruous with their surroundings as that of some delicate hot-house flower blooming in the midst of the desert.
"Could you have believed it if you hadn't seen it?" asked Bessie, the first to break the silence. "Is it all real, or are we still dreaming? I wish somebody would pinch me, my wits are so scattered," and she passed her hand across her eyes as though to dispel some dreadful nightmare.
"I never imagined," replied her companion in a vague uncertain tone of voice, like one laboring under the influence of a narcotic, "that such people existed anywhere outside of books, and yet the samples to which we have just been introduced make characters of fiction look tame in comparison. Oh, dear!" she burst forth, "who could have imagined it?"
"What a transition—I can't understand it!" said Bessie. "I feel like one who has just dropped from the sky to earth."
"No wonder! I, too, am still seeing stars. Jack certainly must be mad, else how could he have ever picked out such a forsaken land whose inhabitants seem to consist chiefly of ruffians and black women?"
"It's simply incomprehensible after all he's seen of the world," replied Bessie. "Did you notice how he enjoyed our discomfiture? How it was all he could do to keep from laughing in our faces?"
"The brute!" cried Blanch.
"If we had only realized to what we were coming—" Bessie began.
"Oh, it's too late to say that!" interrupted Blanch. "Now that I'm here, I'm not going to turn back; I'm going to see this thing through. And what's more," she added with unmistakable emphasis, "I'm going to see that woman! Have you noticed any one that looks like her?" she asked cautiously, lowering her voice and looking about suspiciously, as she rose from her seat.
"Pshaw!" laughed Bessie, also rising and shaking the dust from her skirt. "You've scarcely talked of anything else since we left home. Why, I really believe you are beginning to be jealous of this creature of your imagination. It's too absurd to suppose that Jack—"