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By the time we had taken our respective places on the veranda in front of our door, an immense crowd had assembled. They came in five detachments.... Each set of people came bending under the weight of bamboo poles laden with fruits, figs, fowls, etc. All were dressed in their gayest and many had wreaths of leaves or flowers on their heads.

No, he was mistaken; it was yet too early, and Pulcheria was still busy laying the table. She did not notice him as he went in, for she was busy arranging grapes, figs, pomegranates and sycamore-figs, a fruit resembling mulberries in flavor which grow in clusters from the trunk of the tree- between leaves, which the drought and heat of the past weeks had turned almost yellow.

First came some "big-wig" with a long name, who, thinking I was only an Englishwoman, told me to "get up," and said he "didn't care for consuls, nor English, nor dawwasses." A poor woman standing by begged me to go out again into the sun, and not shade myself under the figs, and thus displease this great man.

Prada, who felt as happy as a child, was then able to give vent to the laughter which he had scarcely been able to restrain: "Look out, Abbe," he called, "mind your figs!" At that very moment Santobono was finishing his second glass of wine with his head thrown back and his eyes blissfully raised to heaven. He gave a start, looked round, and on seeing the hen at once understood the position.

It held long, and I underwent much pain, without much pity except from my poor sister, who did what she could to give me ease; and at length, by frequent applications of figs and stoned raisins roasted, and laid to the boils as hot as I could bear them, they ripened fit for lancing, and soon after sunk; then I had ease.

"Well, if that means that your marriage is a misfortune to you, you know who is to blame," said Wildeve. "The marriage is no misfortune in itself," she retorted with some little petulance. "It is simply the accident which has happened since that has been the cause of my ruin. I have certainly got thistles for figs in a worldly sense, but how could I tell what time would bring forth?"

However, with a merry expression of complicity, he gave the young priest a wink, and then they both watched the dramatic incidents of the affair. Some scraggy fowls were wandering round them searching the yellow turf for grasshoppers; and one of these birds, a little shiny black hen with an impudent manner, had caught sight of the basket of figs and was boldly approaching it.

Robinson has acted handsomely throughout, in short, like the gentleman he is. I wonder if his behaviour on this occasion will weigh with snobs against the iniquity of his having a shop. I thought Thackeray had done something to demolish similar rubbish when he described the young cads who gave the schoolboy Dobbin the nickname 'Figs."

The same evening Turlington was at his office in Austin Friars, investigating the state of affairs, with his head clerk to help him. Stated briefly, the business of the firm was of the widely miscellaneous sort. They plied a brisk trade in a vast variety of commodities. Nothing came amiss to them, from Manchester cotton manufactures to Smyrna figs.

In the city of Yezd there is abundance of all kinds of victuals, especially of figs, grapes, and raisins, which are there more plentiful, in my opinion, than in any other part of the world. It is one of the principal cities in all Persia, and its Saracen inhabitants allege that no Christian can live there above a year.