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The modern married belle at a dinner is apt to be dressed in white, with much crystal trimming, with feathers in her hair, and with diamonds on her neck and arms, and a pair of long, brown Swedish gloves drawn up to her shoulders; a feather fan of ostrich feathers hangs at her side by a ribbon or a chain of diamonds and pearls.
Also she had begged me of a cape I had; it was cunningly made by Basutus, of the whitest feathers of the ostrich; this she put about her shoulders, and it hung down to her middle. It had been a custom with Nada from childhood not to go about as do other girls, naked except for their girdles, for she would always find some rag or skin to lie upon her breast.
He found a mark at length worthy of his attention. On crossing the plain to avoid a large bend in the channel, they came upon a glade or opening of considerable size, and in the middle of this glade a huge bird appeared standing erect. "An ostrich!" exclaimed Hendrik. "No," replied Swartboy; "um ar da pauw." "Yes," said Von Bloom, confirming Swartboy's statement, "it is the pauw."
In one hand he held a cocked hat with an ostrich plume; on his left thigh he wore a sword in a white scabbard of polished leather. He shook hands with no one; but acknowledged the courtesy of his visitors by a very formal bow. When he drove, it was in a coach with four or six handsome horses and outriders and lackeys dressed in resplendent livery.
They of whom he spoke came up in irregular array mounted on dromedaries without housing. At their head rode one with a white lettered green flag, and beating an immense drum. They were armed with long spears of Indian bamboo, garnished below the slender points with swinging tufts of ostrich feathers. Each carried a woman behind him disdainful of a veil.
The walls were covered with dun-colored paper, upon which had been printed in oblique reiteration a crimson shape, something of the nature of a curly ostrich feather, or an acanthus flower, that had in its less faded moments a sort of dingy gaiety.
As the lights faded Alice, with the pretty languorous gesture I so well remembered, opened her fan the fan of ostrich plumes, that became a blur of white that held my eye through the dusk after the curtain rose. Alice, Montani, and the fan! To this combination I had now to add the new element introduced into the situation by the apparent familiar acquaintance of Alice and Mrs.
"I'll give him such a topper for this," he muttered; and then as he struggled on another foot, he suddenly stopped short, looked straight ahead, and exclaimed loudly, "There, I can see you. Don't be stupid, you old ostrich, hiding there. Now then, come out." Scarlett's ruse was a failure. "He knows it isn't true," muttered the lad. "Serve me right for telling lies.
The guanaco furnishes most of their food, and all their clothing. A mantle of skins, sewed with the sinews of the ostrich, fitted closely about the neck and extending below the knee, is their only article of dress, except in the coldest weather, when a kind of shoe, made of the hind hoof and a portion of the skin above it, serves to protect their inferior extremities.
The Persian women are not so generous with their feelings; they keep them for their husbands." Cambyses was too proud to let it be seen that he had heard these words; like the ostrich, he feigned deafness and blindness in order not to seem aware of the looks and murmurs of his guests, which all went to prove that he had been deceived.
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