Most of the city shops had closed their shutters for the day, when Bachir shouldering a pannier bright with blooms, stepped with his companions forth into the street.
Along the Boulevards thousands were pressing towards the Regina Gardens to view the Fireworks, all agog to witness the pack of beagles wrought in brilliant lights due to course a stag across the sky, and which would change, if newspaper reports might be believed, at the critical moment, into “‘something of the nature of a surprise.’”
Pausing before a plate-glass window that adjoined the shop to adjust the flowing folds of his gandourah, and to hoist his flower tray to his small scornful head, Bachir allowed his auxiliaries to drift, mostly two by two, away among the crowd. Only the royal salad-dresser, Harry Cummings, expressed a demure inclination (when the pushing young grocer caressed his arm), to “be alone”; but Guy Thin, who had private designs upon him, was loath to hear of it! He wished to persuade him to buy a bottle of Vinegar from his Store, when he would print on his paper-bags As supplied to his Majesty the King.
“Grant us, O Allah, each good Fortunes,” Bachir beseeched, looking up through his eyelashes towards the moon, that drooped like a silver amulet in the firmament above: in the blue nocturnal air he looked like a purple poppy. “A toute à l’heure mes amis!” he murmured as he moved away.
And in the little closed shop behind the heavy moucharabi, now that they all had gone, the exhalations of the flowers arose; pungent, concerted odours, expressive of natural antipathies and feuds, suave alliances, suffering, pride, and joy.... Only the shining moon through the moucharabi, illumining here a lily, there a leaf, may have guessed what they were saying:
“My wires are hurting me: my wires are hurting me.”
“I have no water. I cannot reach the water.”
“They have pushed me head down into the bottom of the bowl.”
“I’m glad I’m in a Basket! No one will hurl me from a window to be bruised under foot by the callous crowd.”
“It’s uncomfy, isn’t it, without one’s roots?”