I never ceased to
be surprised by the scorn, contempt, disgust and frequently sheer
ferocity manifested in the male and particularly in the female faces. All
the ladies wore, of course, black; they were wholly unbeautiful of face
or form, some of them actually repellant; not one should I, even under
more favourable circumstances, have enjoyed meeting. The first time I
caught water everybody in the town was returning from church, and a
terrific sight it was. _Vive la bourgeoisie_, I said to myself, ducking
the shafts of censure by the simple means of hiding my face behind the
moving water barrel.
But one day--as I started to inform the reader--somebody and I were
catching water, and, in fact, had caught our last load, and were
returning with it down the street; when I, who was striding rapidly
behind trying to lessen with both hands the impetus of the machine,
suddenly tripped and almost fell with surprise--
On the curb of the little unbeautiful street a figure was sitting, a
female figure dressed in utterly barbaric pinks and vermilions, having a
dark shawl thrown about her shoulders; a positively Arabian face
delimited by a bright coif of some tenuous stuff, slender golden hands
holding with extraordinary delicacy what appeared to be a baby of not
more than three months old; and beside her a black-haired child of
perhaps three years and beside this child a girl of fourteen, dressed
like the woman in crashing hues, with the most exquisite face I had ever
known.
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