It made a
cheerful 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.
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