“Doh after de rude t’ings she say to me—” she broke off, blinking a little at the sunlight through the thrilling shutters.
“If I remember, beloved, you were both equally candid,” he remarked, wandering out upon the balcony.
It was on the palm-grown Messalina, an avenue that comprised a solid portion of the Ruiz estate, that he had installed her, in a many-storied building, let out in offices and flats.
Little gold, blue, lazy and romantic Cuna, what chastened mood broods over thy life to-day?
“Have you your crucifix? Won’t you buy a cross?” persuasive, feminine voices rose up from the pavement below. Active again with the waning sun, “workers,” with replenished wares, were emerging forth from their respective depots nursing small lugubrious baskets.
“Have you bought your cross?” The demand, when softly cooed, by some solicitous patrician, almost compelled an answer; and most of the social world of Cuna appeared to be vending crosses, or “Pilgrims’ medals” in imitation “bronze,” this afternoon upon the kerb. At the corner of Valdez Street, across the way, Countess Kattie Taosay (née Soderini), austere in black with Parma violets, was presiding over a depot festooned with nothing but rosaries, that “professed” themselves, as they hung, to the suave trade wind.
“Not a light:
Not a bite!
What a——”
Edna softly hummed, shading her eyes with a big feather fan.