Although the Sun-god was scarcely risen, already the radiant street teemed with life.
Veiled dames, flirting fans, bent on church or market, were issuing everywhere from their doors, and the air was vibrant with the sweet voice of bells.
To rejoin his parents promptly at their hotel was a promise he was tempted to forget.
Along streets all fresh and blue in the shade of falling awnings, it was fine, indeed, to loiter. Beneath the portico of a church, a running fountain drew his steps aside. Too shy to strip and squat in the basin, he was glad to bathe freely his head, feet and chest: then stirred by curiosity to throw a glance at the building, he lifted the long yellow nets that veiled the door.
It was the fashionable church of La Favavoa, and the extemporary address of the Archbishop of Cuna was in full, and impassioned, swing.
“Imagine the world, my friends, had Christ been born a girl!” he was saying in tones of tender dismay as Charlie entered.
Subsiding bashfully to a bench, Charlie gazed around.
So many sparkling fans. One, a delicate light mauve one: “Shucks! If only you wa’ butterflies!” he breathed, contemplating with avidity the nonchalant throng; then perceiving a richer specimen splashed with silver of the same amative tint: “Oh you lil beauty!” And, clutching his itching net to his heart, he regretfully withdrew.
Sauntering leisurely through the cool, Mimosa-shaded streets, he approached, as he guessed, the Presidency. A score of shoeblacks, lolled at cards, or gossip, before its gilded pales. Amazed at their audacity (for the President had threatened more than once to “wring the Public’s neck”), Charlie hastened by. Public gardens, brilliant with sarracenias, lay just beyond the palace, where a music-pavilion, surrounded by palms and rocking-chairs, appeared a favourite, and much-frequented, resort; from here he observed the Cunan bay strewn with sloops and white-sailed yachts, asleep upon the tide. Strolling on, he found himself in the busy vicinity of the Market. Although larger, and more varied, it resembled, in other respects, the village one at home.
“Say, honey, say”—crouching in the dust before a little pyre of mangoes, a lean-armed woman besought him to buy.