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Past the Presidency and the public park, the Theatres Maxine Bush, Eden-Garden, and Apollo, along the Avenida, and the Jazz Halls by the wharf, past little suburban shops, and old, deserted churchyards where bloom geraniums, through streets of squalid houses, and onward skirting pleasure lawns and orchards, bibbitty-bobbitty, beneath the sovereign brightness of the sky, the Farananka tram crawled along.
Surveying the landscape listlessly through the sticks of her fan, Miss Edna Mouth grew slightly bored—alas, poor child; couldst thou have guessed the blazing brightness of thy Star, thou wouldst doubtless have been more alert!
“Sh’o, it dat far an’ tejus,” she observed to the conductor, lifting upon him the sharp-soft eyes of a parroquet.
She was looking bewitching in a frock of silverish mousseleine and a violet tallyho cap, and dangled upon her knees an intoxicating sheaf of blossoms, known as Marvel of Peru.
“Hab patience, lil Missey, an’ we soon be dah.”
* * * * *
“He tells me, dear child, he tells me,” Madame Ruiz was rounding a garden path, upon the arm of her son, “he tells me, Vitti, that the systole and diastole of my heart’s muscles are slightly inflamed; and that I ought, darling, to be very careful....”