Page:Sixteen years of an artist's life in Morocco, Spain and the Canary Islands.djvu/62

Rh choose rather to think so―the envy of each other. About thirty or forty women, in all, were sitting along the sides of the square court. As all were dressed much much after the same fashion, the long description I have already given of the lady with whom I came will apply equally well to the others. It would be impossible to describe the ludicrous effect of so many not very expressive faces, all painted alike, with the same bright crimson hue, which contrasted strongly with the accompanying daubing of white.

In the midst of the assembly sat two or three old hags, the professional musicians engaged for the occasion, who, if they beat any harmony out of their Tomtoms, the instrument which they professed, most effectually drowned it in the noise. Story-tellers were there to amuse the guests by their long-winded narratives of heroic exploits, unmerited suffering, unsympathetic fathers, love suffering and at last triumphant, and the other stock subjects which are laid up as materials for telling fictions, as old scenes are stored up in a theatre to afford original decorations for new dramas. A Moorish Sheridan might probably have gleaned abundant materials for a new School for Scandal, for the commodity was there, and its eager tittle tattle was mellifluously whispered into many a willing ear.