their sandals, and
negro women, with bare shoulders and long trains, vending lottery
tickets and rolling huge cigars between their lips. It was an old
story to Clay and King, but none of the others had seen a
Spanish-American city before; they were familiar with the Far East and
the Mediterranean, but not with the fierce, hot tropics of their sister
continent, and so their eyes were wide open, and they kept calling
continually to one another to notice some new place or figure.

They in their turn did not escape from notice or comment. The two
sisters would have been conspicuous anywhere--in a queen's drawing-room
or on an Indian reservation. Theirs was a type that the caballeros and
senoritas did not know. With them dark hair was always associated with
dark complexions, the rich duskiness of which was always vulgarized by
a coat of powder, and this fair blending of pink and white skin under
masses of black hair was strangely new, so that each of the few women
who were to be met on the street turned to look after the carriage,
while the American women admired their mantillas, and felt that the
straw sailor-hats they wore had become heavy and unfeminine.

Clay was very happy in picking out what was most characteristic and
picturesque, and every street into which he directed the driver to take
them seemed to possess some building or monument that was of peculiar
interest. They did not know that he had mapped out this ride many
times before, and was taking them over a route which he had already
travelled with them in imagination. King knew what the capital would be
like before he entered it, from his experience of other South American
cities, but he acted as though it were all new to him, and allowed Clay
to explain, and to give the reason for those features of the place that
were unusual and characteristic. Clay noticed this and appealed to him
from time to time, when he was in doubt; but the other only smiled back
and shook his head, as much as to say, "This is your city; they would
rather hear about it from you."

Clay took them to the principal shops, where the two girls held
whispered consultations over lace mantillas, which they had at once
determined to adopt, and bought the gorgeous paper fans, covered with
brilliant pictures of bull-fighters in suits of silver tinsel; and from
these open stores he led them to a dingy little shop, where there was
old silver and precious hand-painted fans of mother-of-pearl