upper landing like a reception-room, a panelled
drawing-room large enough to lose one's self in, ornamented by primitive
frescoes on the walls above the panels.

The English consul was an old Albanian gentleman with delightful
manners. For a long time he had been suffering from an illness which had
started from a wound in the head, received during the siege of Scutari.
After the inevitable coffee and cigarettes his son wandered out with us
and showed us the interesting parts of the town. Out of a big doorway
came two women in gorgeous clothes. They had been paying a morning call,
and bade farewell to their hostess. Doubtless they were mother and
daughter.

One was faded and beautiful; the younger was of the plump cream and
roses variety with modestly downcast eyes. Both wore enormous white lace
Mary Queen of Scots' veils, great baggy trousers made of stiff shiny
black stuff, which was gathered into hard gold embroidered pipes which
encased the ankles and upwards. These pipes were so stiff that they had
to walk with straight knees and feet far apart. Their full cavalier
coats were thickly covered with many kilometres of black braid sewn on
in curly patterns, and the girl wore at least a hundred golden coins
hung in semicircles on her chest.

They left the third woman at the door and walked back a few steps down
the road, then turned, and laying hand on breast, bowed ceremoniously,
first the mother, then the daughter, who never lifted her eyes; another
twenty steps and again the same performance; still once more, after
which they slowly waddled round the corner. Suma told us they wore the
costume of the _haute bourgeoisie_, and probably the girl had been taken
to see her future mother-in-law.

The next vision that met our eyes was the doctor in his best clothes,
frock-coat, white spats, gloves, and a minute pork-pie cap perched on
the top of his spherical countenance.

"In Scutari it is necessary that I should be _en tenue_," was his
explanation.

Suma parted with us, promising to take us to the bazaar the next day,
and we spent the afternoon sketching and avoiding a dumb idiot who tried
to amuse us by standing on his head in front of whatever object we chose
to sketch, and at intervals thrust into our hands a letter which he
thought was a money producing talisman. It said in English, "Kick this
chap if he bothers you."

There are other traces of the English soldiery here. Little children
with outstretched hands