“Sh’o nuff, dat was a close shave,” he gasped, gazing dazed about him.
Clustered back to back near by upon the grass, three stolid matrons, matrons of hoary England, evidently not without previous earthquake experience, were ignoring resolutely the repeated shocks:
“I always follow the Fashions, dear, at a distance!” one was saying: “this little gingham gown I’m wearing, I had made for me after a design I found in a newspaper at my hotel.”
“It must have been a pretty old one, dear—I mean the paper, of course.”
“New things are only those you know that have been forgotten.”
“Mary ... there’s a sharp pin, sweet, at the back of your ... Oh!”
Venturing upon his legs, Charlie turned away.
By the Park palings a few “Salvationists” were holding forth, while in the sweep before the bandstand, the artists from the Opera in their costumes of Aïda, were causing almost a greater panic, among the ignorant, than the earthquake was itself. A crowd, promiscuous rather than representative, composed variously of chauffeurs (making a wretched pretence, poor chaps, of seeking out their masters), Cyprians, patricians (these in opera cloaks and sparkling diamonds), tourists, for whom the Hodeidah girls would not dance that night, and bwam-wam bwam-wams, whose equivocal behaviour, indeed, was perhaps more shocking even than the shocks set the pent Park ahum. Yet, notwithstanding the upheavals of Nature, certain persons there were bravely making new plans.
“How I wish I could, dear! But I shall be having a houseful of women over Sunday—that’s to say.”