rful note which appealed to them both; it was a pictorial
combination, Hilda and Jimmy Finnigan and the Viceroy; there was
something of gay burlesque in the metropolitan poster against the
crumbling plaster of the outer mosque wall where Mussulmans left their
shoes. Talking of Hilda, they smiled; it was a way her friends had, a
testimony to the difference of her. In Alicia's smile there was a
satisfaction rather subtle and in a manner superior; she knew of things.

[Footnote 8: Doorkeeper.]

The life of the market, the bazaar, was all awake and moving. They
rolled up though a crowd of inferior vehicles, empty for the moment and
abandoned, where the leisurely crowd, with calculation under its
turbans, swayed about the market-house, and the pots of a palm-dealer
ran out of bounds and made a little grove before the stall of the man
who sold pith helmets. The warm air held the smell of all sorts of
commodities; there was a great hum of small transactions, clink of small
profits. "It makes one feel immensely practical and acquisitive," Duff
said, looking at the loaded baskets on the coolies' heads; and he
insisted on getting out. "I am dying to buy an enormous number of
desirable things very cheap. But not combs or shirt-buttons, thank you,
nor any ribbons or lace--is that good lace, Miss Livingstone? Nor even a
live duck--really I am difficult. We might inquire the price of the
duck, though."

The sense of being contributory to his holiday satisfaction reigned in
her. She abandoned herself to it with a little smile that played
steadily about her lips, as if it would tell him, without her sanction,
how continually she rejoiced in his regained well-being. They made their
way slowly toward the flower-corner; there were so many things he wanted
to stop before as they went, leaning on his stick to examine them and
delighting in opportunities for making himself quite ridiculous. The
country tobacco-dealer laughed too, squatting behind his basket; it was
a mad sahib, but not madder than the rest, and there was no hurry.
Alicia saw the pink glow of the roses beyond, where the sun struck
across them over the shoulders of the crowd, and was content to reach
them by degrees. They would be in their achieved sweetness a kind of
climax to the hour's experience, and after that she was not entirely
sure that the day would be as grey as other days.

This was the flood-time of roses and it was exquisite in the
flower-corner with the soft