For a moment they halted, where the path broadened on a market-place, part shade, part luminous with golden dust.

A squad of lank boys, kicking miraculously with flat upturned soles, kept a wicker ball shining in the air, as true and lively as a plaything on a fountain-jet.

Beyond, their tiny juniors, girls and boys knee-high, and fat tumbling babies in rainbow finery, all hand-locked and singing, turned their circle inside out and back again, in the dizzy graces of the "Water Wheel." 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.