Page:The Tattooed Countess (1924).pdf/226

 at eleven, Gareth was announced, the Countess was ready to go out. She handed the basket to the boy. I hope it isn't too heavy, she said.

In a little while their walk led them beyond the bounds of Ella's ordinary rounds. Soon, indeed, they were passing through a purlieu of the town which she had never seen, the quarter devoted to the Bohemian residents, where the streets were unpaved and where they walked on a wooden side-walk. They passed rows of cottages, painted in gay colours, small stores, flaunting signs in the Czech language, which seemed, Ella thought, to contain a great many V's and Z's. The women, picturesque with bright handkerchiefs bound about their heads or worn as scarfs around their shoulders, sat on their low doorsteps. Geese, chickens, and dogs owned the yards. Here and there a bitch or a sow flat in the dust suckled her young. Straggling gardens exhibited the vegetables of the season; cucumbers, gourds, green and yellow and striated, squash, and pumpkins bulged from vines trailing over the ground. Against the houses hollyhocks reared their stalks, thick with pink and white and yellow pompons or morning-glories waved their pretty, purple bells.

I had no idea, Ella exclaimed, that Maple Valley boasted anything as curious as this. It's like a corner of old Europe. Why aren't the residents proud of this quarter instead of those stupid water-works?

Nobody ever mentions it except in depreciation,