. "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. But
not combs or shirt-buttons, thank you, nor any ribbons or lace--is
that good lace, Miss Livingstone? Nor even a live duck--really I am
difficult. We might inquire the price of the duck though."

The sense of being contributive to his holiday satisfaction reigned
in her. She abandoned herself to it with a little smile that played
steadily about her lips, as if it would tell him without her sanction,
how continually she rejoiced in his regained well-being. They made their
way slowly toward the flower-corner; there were so many things he wanted
to stop before as they went, leaning on his stick to examine them and
delighting in opportunities for making himself quite ridiculous. The
country tobacco-dealer laughed too, squatting behind his basket--it
was a mad sahib, but not madder than the rest; and there was no hurry.
Alicia saw the pink glow of the roses beyond, where the sun struck
across them over the shoulders of the crowd, and was content to reach
them by degrees. They would be in their achieved sweetness a kind of
climax to the hour's experience, and after that she was not entirely
sure that the day would be as grey as other days.

This was the flood-time of roses, and it was exquisite in the
flower-corner with the soft wind picking up their fragrance and
squares of limpid sunlight standing on the wet flagstones. Some of the
stall-keepers had little glass cases, and in these there was room only
for the Gloire de Dijons and the La Frances and the velvety Jacks, the
rest over-ran the tables and the floor in anything that would hold them.
The place rioted with the joy and the passion of roses, for buying and
selling. There were other flowers, nasturtiums, cornbottles, mignonette,
but they had a diminished insignificant look in their tied-up bunches
beside the triumph of the roses. Farther on, beyond the cage of
the money-changer, the country people were hoarse with crying their
vegetables, in two green rows, and beyond that where the jostling crowd
divided, shone a glimpse of oranges and pomegranates. In this part
there were many comers and goers, lean Mussulman table-servants, and
fat Eurasian ladies who kept boarding-houses, Armenian women with
embroidered shawls drawn over their heads, sailor