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We see the Sicilian fruit-seller with his native dialect; the brisk French madame with her dainty stall; the mild-eyed Louisiana Indian woman with her sack of gumbo spread out before her; the fish-dealer with his wooden bench and odd patois; the dark-haired creole lady with her servant gliding here and there; the old Spanish gentleman with the blood of Castile tingling in his veins; the graceful French dame in her becoming toilet; the Hebrew woman with her dark eyes and rich olive complexion; the pure Anglo-Saxon type, ever distinguishable from all others; and, swarming among them all, the irrepressible negro, him you find in every size, shape, and shade, from the tiny yellow pickaninny to his rotund and inky grandmother, from the lazy wharf- darky, half clad in both mind and body, to the dignified colored policeman, who patrols with officious gravity the city streets, in freedom or slavery, north or south, in sunshine or out of it, ever the same easy, improvident race; ever the same gleaming teeth and ready "Yes, sah!
Instantly it occurred to her that some disguise was absolutely necessary if she would not court an attention fatal to her enterprise. It chanced that where she stood for a moment a fruit-seller occupied a tiny shop, squeezed tightly between a church and a restaurant.
I heard that she was ill; no, not dying, but very ill. Alphonsine gave me her address; a little higher up on the same side as the Cirque Fernando, nearly facing the Elysee Montmartre. The number I could inquire out, she said, and I went away in a cab up the steep and stony Rue des Martyres, noticing the cafe and then the brasserie and a little higher up the fruit-seller and the photographer.
She could not even have imagined a fruit-seller outside his heaven-decreed occupation of selling fruit. Mrs. Choate smiled a little to herself, wondering what Mary would say if she could know her mother was willing to consign the inconvenient Esther to perpetual limbo and marry her to handsome Jeff. "Mother!" she could imagine her horrified cry. It would all be in that.
Cursing their cowardice, I hurried on in search of a physician, and found one at last, a sallow Frenchman, who listened with obvious reluctance to my account of the condition in which I had left the little fruit-seller, and at the end shook his head decisively, and refused to move. "He is as good as dead," he observed, with cold brevity.
Not a drawing. The impression of an ink-smeared hand laid flat on the paper. This touch of his own little daughter had been always on his heart, as he had come year after year to Calcutta, to sell his wares in the streets. Tears came to my eyes. I forgot that he was a poor Cabuli fruit-seller, while I was but no, what was I more than he? He also was a father.
Even the sage monk Hermes, devoted to study and experiment, was unable to keep the fruit-seller out of his mind, and would fain have discovered the secret of his charm, partly for the friendly purpose of explaining to the lad himself his perhaps more than natural gifts with a view to their profitable cultivation. It was a period, as older men took note, of young men and their influence.
But he was still conscious of a strong desire: to protect Lydia, in her child's innocence, from evil. He wondered if she were not busy enough, that she had time to take up Madame Beattie. Yet she and Anne seemed as industrious as little ants. "Lydia," said he, "what if I should have an Italian fruit-seller come up here to the house and teach Italian to you and me and maybe Anne?"
Jock and she ignored it altogether. As for Jock, the delight of giving away was strong in him, and the position was so strange that it fascinated his boyish imagination. To act such a part as that of Haroun-al-Raschid in real life, and change the whole life of whatsoever poor cobbler or fruit-seller attracted him, was a vision of fairyland such as Jock had not yet outgrown.
There was Sing You the fruit-seller, and Li Ton-ti the wood-carver; Hi Seng left his clients to cry in vain for water; and Wang Yu, the idle pipe-maker, closed his shop of "The Fountain of Beauty," and hung on the shutter the gilt dragon to keep away customers in his absence.
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