" Other boys, and girls still
trousered and queued like boys, played at hopscotch, in and out among
shoes that lay across the road. All traffic, even the steady trotting
coolies, fetched a lenient compass roundabout.
"Lucky Hand, Lucky Hand! Allow me to pass," begged a coffin-maker's man,
bent under a plank. "These Long-Life boards are heavy."
"Ho, Lame Chicken!" called another, blocked by the hop-scotch. He was a
brown grass-cutter, who grinned, and fondled a smoky cloth that
buzzed--some tribe of wild bees, captured far afield. "Ho, Lame Chicken!
Do not bump me. They will sting."
He came through safely; for at the same moment the musical "Cling-clank"
of a sweetmeat-seller's bell turned the game into a race. The way was
clear, also, for a tiny, aged collector of paper, flying the gay flag of
an "Exalted Literary Society," and plodding, between two great baskets,
on his pious rounds. "Revere and spare," he piped, at intervals,--
"revere and spare the Written Word!"
All the bright picture lingered with the two alien wayfarers, long after
they had passed and the sun had withdrawn from their path.
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