They went up one hill and down another, and the ponies ran so fast, and turned round the corners of the roads so quickly, that sometimes mamma was afraid that the carriage would be upset, and that they would all be "tipped out in a heap." Rosy thought it would be good fun if they were. She often rolled about herself, like a little ball, without hurting herself; and she thought that papa and mamma would only get a little dusty, and that it would be a nice little job for her to brush the dust off when she got home.
Just then a number of boys and girls came along the road to meet them, and Rosy saw that all the little ones wore caps, not hats or bonnets. There was one baby with large black eyes, whom she would have liked to kiss and hug. It was so fat and pretty. But it was dressed in a way that she had never seen any baby dressed before, for its feet and legs were put into a sort of large bag, so that it could not kick like other children; and Rosy wondered how it could laugh so merrily.
When the carriage came near this little party the man did not hold the reins of his horses tight as an English coachman would have done. He only screamed out to the children, "Gare! gare!" which Rosy's papa told her meant "Get out of the way."
And when they were all past there came next a great wagon, piled up with the trunks of trees. The horses which drew this had no bells; but they had a funny sort of post sticking up high between their ears, with lots of things hanging on to it. They had also three pink tassels hanging on their faces, one in front and one on each side. These tassels shook as they went along, and looked so pretty that Rosy thought to herself that if ever she had a toy horse again she would ask nurse to make some little tassels for it just like them. Her papa had told her, too, that they were to keep off the flies, which teased the poor horses very often dreadfully. And of course Rosy would not like her horse to be teased.
But the carriage went on while she was thinking this; and soon they saw four old women coming along the road with large baskets, full of some green stuff, on their heads. The little girl did not say anything as they went by, but she looked very particularly to see how they were dressed.
Now I must tell you why she did this.
In the first place, then, she had never seen any old women a bit like them before.
They walked all in a row with their baskets on their heads, and with their hands stuck into their sides, and they talked very fast as they came along. On their heads they wore very, very large hats, with small crowns. Rosy had never seen such hats before, and she heard her mamma say that she had never seen them either. Under these great hats they had nice white caps, with colored handkerchiefs over them, which hung down behind. They had, besides, other colored handkerchiefs over their shoulders, and two of them had red gowns.
Now Rosy had had a present given her in Paris. It was a piece of French money, worth ten English pennies; and with this money she had bought ten Dutch dolls, which nursey was going to dress for her. At first she meant them to make an English school; but now that she had seen so many funny people she thought she would like her dolls to be dressed like the people in Cannes, because then they would just show her dear grandmamma how very nice they looked, and how very different to English people.
She was very quiet for a little while, because she was making this grand plan; but they soon turned out of the narrow street, and all at once she saw the sea again.