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As the Manzanares in summer is divided into a great number of small streams, this scene is repeated on the edge of each one, while the expanse of sand which occupies the centre of what ought to be the river-bed is one forest of clothes-props, with all the wash of Madrid hanging on the lines.
It continued to make such a clatter there that he had to go down and pile up barrels and slop-buckets and bricks and clothes-props and part of the grape-arbor on it, so that all it could do was to lie there all night buzzing with a kind of smothered hum and keeping the next-door neighbors awake, so that they pelted it with bootjacks, under the impression that it was cats. Mrs.
"Drift and dash, and roar and rush, and the devil let loose in the thick of it. My eyes are worn out with it. Take the glass, Erema, and tell us who is next to be washed away. A new set of clothes-props for Mrs. Mangles I paid for the very day I came back from town."
Sheep-pens were in the square full of sheep, and men were purchasing them and picking them out as they were sold; dogs were barking; the wandering dealer who pitched his earthenware van at the corner was ringing his plates together to prove them indestructible; old Madge Campion, who sold gooseberry-tarts and hot mutton-pies on her board under an awning supported by clothes-props, was surrounded by a shoal of children, as happy as the sunshine; the man with the panorama was exhibiting, at one halfpenny a head, the murder of Lord William Russell to a string of boys and girls who mounted the stool in turn to look through the glasses; and the cheapjack was expatiating on the merits of cutlery, pictures, fire-irons, and proving that his brass candlestick, honestly-worth-ten-shillings-but-obtainable-at-one-and-four-pence- because-he-really-could-not-cart-it-about-any-longer answered the double purpose of a candlestick and burglar-alarm by reason of the tremendous click of the spring, which anybody might if they liked mistake for a pistol.
I sometimes sit at that window before going to bed and look at the moon as it silvers the swaying clothes-props, and I can easily imagine they are great tropical palms, especially when an organ is playing round the corner. Sometimes the moon shines straight down on Bobby's tombstone, and then I am glad. Ah, now you're smiling. I know you think me a crazy old thing."
There seems no need to be dull in the suburbs. A man in a cart is still crying coke down the street. Another desires to sell clothes-props. A brace of lovers come stealing out of the Common through the mist, careless of mud and soaking grass. I suppose people would say I'm too old to make love on a County Council bench.
"No, indeed it wasn't!" said they, jumping farther to escape her blows. For she had got one of her clothes-props, and was laying about her in the most reckless manner. However, she hurt nobody, and then she suddenly burst out, not laughing, but crying.
On the level behind the entrenched army the women of Waddy and their families were picknicking gaily on the grass, for it was accepted as a great gala day in the township, and flags of all shapes and colours, devised from all kinds of discarded garments, fluttered from tree-tops, chimneys, posts, clothes-props, and any other eminence to which a streamer could be fastened.
"Ride! of course he can," said Harry, "better than I can; but a couple of old clothes-props, tied together, and put straddling over the pony, would ride better than Oh! don't, Phil, it hurts," he continued, as Philip indulged his brother with a few thumps in the back to repay the compliment that he had given to the punisher.
Don’t fall over this plate basket—it’s one of the ‘properties’—the caldron for the witches’ cave; and the three uncouth-looking figures, with broken clothes-props in their hands, who are drinking gin-and-water out of a pint pot, are the weird sisters.
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