Immobile ladies glided by on the great pleasure drive like large
tinted statues; dressed altogether as the colored pictures in
fashion books, holding white curly dogs in their curved arms; the
coachmen in front of them seemed carved in plum-colored broadcloth;
only by watching the groom's eyelids could one ascertain that they
were flesh and blood. Young girls, two, three, and four, cantered
by; their linen habits rose and fell decorously, their hair was
smooth. Mounted policemen, glorious in buttons, breathing out
authority, curvetted past, and everywhere and always the
chug-chug-chug of the gleaming, fierce-eyed motor cars filled one's
ears. They darted past, flaming scarlet, sombre olive and livid
white; a crouching, masked figure, intent at the wheel, veiled,
shapeless women behind a whir of dust to show where they had been a
breath before.
And everywhere, as far as the eye could reach, a thin stream of
white and pink and blue, a tumbling river of curls and caps and bare
legs, were the children. A babble of shrill cries, of chattering
laughter, of fretful screams, an undercurrent of remonstrance, of
soothing patience, of angry threatening, marked their slow progress
up and down the walk; in the clear spaces of the little park they
trotted freely after hoops and balls, rolled and ran over the green,
and hid, shouting, behind the bushes.
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