“I shouldn’t like it at all,” sniffed Courtesy.
“Not like flies in amber,” said the gardener. “Because flies spoil the amber.”
“Well, you and I wouldn’t exactly decorate the sea,” remarked the suffragette.
“Look at those cannibals waiting for us,” said Courtesy. “My dears, I’m simply terrified.”
The cannibals received them from the launch with the proverbial eagerness of cannibals. In the first three minutes of their arrival on land the travellers could have bought enough goods to furnish several bazaars had they been so inclined. The suffragette, by tickling the chin of a superb blue and yellow bird, was considered to have tacitly concluded a bargain with the owner as to the possession of it, and there was much discussion before she was disembarrassed of her unwelcome protégé. The gardener bought two walking-sticks in the excitement of the moment, before he remembered that he was devoid of money. The owner of the walking-sticks, however, kindly reminded him of the one-sidedness of the purchase, and he was obliged to borrow from the suffragette.
The town, like a brazen beauty feigning modesty, was withdrawn a little from the wharves. There was a dry-looking grass space with goats as its only gardeners. This the party crossed, and the sensitive plant ducked and dived into its inner remoteness as they passed. The streets in front of them, hot and glaring, pointed to the hills, like fevered fingers pointing to peace which is unattainable.
The main street received them fiercely. The heat was like the blaring of trumpets. The trams were intolerably noisy, clanking, and rattling like a devil’s cavalry charge. Black, shining women, with the faces of bull-dogs—only not so sincere—swung in a slow whirlwind of many petticoats up and down the street, with vivid burdens of fruit piled in ochre-coloured baskets on their heads. Little boys and girls, with their clothes precariously slung on thin brown shoulders, and well aired by an impromptu system of ventilation, ran by the gardener’s side, and reminded him of the necessity of quatties and half-pinnies, even in this paradise of the poor, where sustenance literally falls on your head from every tree in the forest.
“This is exhausting,” said Mrs. Paul Rust, forced by extreme heat into a confession of the obvious. “Policeman, where can we get a cab?”
“Yes, please, missis,” replied the policeman, who was tastefully dressed in white, by way of a contrast to his complexion.
“Nonsense, man,” said Mrs. Rust. “I repeat, where can a cab be found?”