"For all the world," whispered Hope, "like a cupboard full of china
pitchers!"
Next to this, perhaps, would be a group that only needed framing to
make a picture, where two grave men, each wrapped in his burnous, sat
Turk-fashion, playing checkers before a low doorway, while back in the
shadow an indistinct figure, in flowing white drapery, touched the
strings of some instrument which sent out a sound of thin tinkling,
that could scarcely be called music because so tuneless and monotonous.
In places the streets were so very narrow, dark, and filthy, and the
few figures slid away into the windowless house walls in so ghostlike a
fashion, that the girls hesitated a little before following their guide.
"I feel a good deal as if I were going through a graveyard," whispered
Bess once, "only it's one where the inmates sometimes walk!"
"Yes," said Mr. Lawrence, and told her how a French author who has
written well and largely of this odd corner of the earth, called these
steep dark streets, "mysterious staircases leading to silence," which
greatly impressed them all as entirely descriptive of their weirdness.
Hunger at length drove them back to the fine new town, with its broad,
well-paved streets, gas and electric lights, gay awnings, and beautiful
parks and squares where grew a very luxury of blossoms. They were all
quite ready for rest and dinner, and felt they had found both in the
great dining-room of an elegant hotel, where the only foreign things
were the punkahs and the turbaned waiters, for the tables, glittering
in silver and crystal, the richly frescoed walls, the surrounding
galleries lined with blooming plants, the military band playing there,
and the many uniformed officers among the guests at table, suggested
only French dominion and Parisian luxury and fashion.
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