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They represented groups of plump provincial-looking young women in dowdy European ball-dresses; and it required an effort of the imagination to believe that the lovely creatures in velvet caftans, with delicately tattooed temples under complicated head-dresses, and hennaed feet crossed on muslin cushions, were the same as the beaming frumps in the photographs.
For instance, they have their hair hennaed and their eyebrows plucked. You can also have your hands and feet hennaed, and, if you like it, be tattooed. The whole operation takes about four hours. It is often said by the ignorant that people can get as good a hammam in London or Paris as in the East.
Esther spied the plump, hennaed woman whom she had seen speak to Lady Clifford that day weeks ago, sitting at a table with another Frenchwoman equally plump and two men, fat and bald, both wearing a good deal of jewellery. The younger man, incredibly, had round his pudgy wrist a bangle set with turquoises!
A young lady with hair newly hennaed and face suggestive of an over-ripe pear ogled him over her partner's elbow as they jazzed by. Let her dance on until she got so sick of him she was ready to scream, was Tom's thought. In one corner, obviously having a poor time, was Leofwin Balch. Tom sat down beside him. "It's too hot in here, don't you think?" he asked. "Much," replied Leofwin.
I'm certainly glad I kidded that old widow into thinking she's puhfectly stunning with her hair hennaed. She don't trust anybody but me to touch it up. And she's good for a scalp and facial and manicure every week of her life, besides getting her hair dressed every Saturday anyway, and sometimes oftener when she's going out. And she always has a marcelle after a shampoo.
As the young things moved about us on soft hennaed feet the light played on shifting gleams of gold and silver, blue and violet and apple-green, all harmonized and bemisted by clouds of pink and sky-blue, and through the changing group capered a little black picaninny in a caftan of silver-shot purple with a sash of raspberry red. But presently there was a flutter in the aviary.
The women, squatting among their kids and poultry and cheeses, glanced at us with brilliant hennaed eyes and smiles that lifted their short upper lips maliciously. Their thin faces were painted in stripes and patterns of indigo.
Groups of women in pale tints and floating veils spoke to each other from terrace to terrace, through the chatter of children and the guttural calls of bedizened negresses. And presently, on the roof adjoining ours, appeared the slim dancing-boys with white caftans and hennaed feet.
There was a note of warning in his voice the cause of which Esther perceived when a moment later the couple were joined by a plump Frenchwoman with hennaed hair and a burnt-orange make-up. "Comment ça va, Thérèse? Ah, Captain, on me dit que vous avez l'intention de nous quitter. C'est vrai?" What ensued was lost in a cackle of French interspersed with high-pitched laughter.
Then the singing-girls would come out from Marrakech, squat round-faced young women heavily hennaed and bejewelled, accompanied by gaunt musicians in bright caftans; and for hours they would sing sentimental or obscene ballads to the persistent maddening twang of violin and flute and drum.
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