Beyond the clothes lines was a Pagoda, set up in an extravagant mood, containing a gilded Buddha—a thorn and a symbol of unrighteousness to a convent of Ursulines whose recreation yard was underneath.
Here, at a certain hour when the Mother Superior was wont to walk round and round her preserves, a young, bewhiskered man frequently would come bearing ceremonial offerings of rice or linen newly washed, and falling flat before the shrine would roll himself about and beat the ground as if in mortal anguish of his sins before her fascinated eye. Here, too, from time to time, festivities would take place—sauteries (to a piano-organ), or convivial petits soupers after the play.
An iron ladder connected the roof with the work and living-rooms below.
Ascending this by the light of the stars, Mrs. Sixsmith and the New Juliet, gay from a certain grill, audaciously advanced, their playful screams rendered inaudible by the sounds of a tricksome waltz wafted down to them from the piano-organ above.
Items of linen nestling close to a line overhead showed palely against the night like roosting doves.
“Help.... Oh! she’s falling,” Mrs. Sixsmith screamed. “Are you there, Mr. Nice?”
“Give me your hand,” Miss Sinquier begged.
“Should she rick her spine....”
“Whew-ps!” Miss Sinquier exclaimed, scrambling to the top.
London, beyond the frail filigree cross on the Ursulines’ bleached wall, blazed with light. From the Old Boar and Castle over the way came a perfect flood of it. And all along the curved river-line from Westminster to St. Paul’s glittered lamps, lamps, lamps.