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As soon as I could make her hear, you should have seen how she hopped up like a two-year-old into the vacant seat; and they were far more serious about it than any one was at Nazeby, where they had hundreds on, and Aunt Maria and the others only played for counters that long mother-o'-pearl fish kind. Had they been paring them for generations before, I wonder?
"I hope," she added, "to make the very best use of it later." And again her eyes met those of the statue that she had waked to life. It was night in the harbour of Noumea; a night of pitiless, white, revealing moonlight which sharpened the black outline of every shadow, and made the whitewashed wall of each low house gleam like mother-o'-pearl.
Every one shrieked compliments as the clothing of the Agha's daughter was delicately removed by the beaming negresses; and gifts of gold-spangled bonbons, wonderfully iced cakes, crystallized fruit, flowers, gilded bottles of concentrated perfume, mother-o'-pearl and tortoise boxes, gaudy silk handkerchiefs made in Paris for Algerian markets, and little silver fetiches were presented to the bride.
And then I were going to bite a great piece out of it, but a gent as sat next me whispers, `Cut it, man; it's more civil to cut it. So I takes up the knife, which had got a mother-o'-pearl handle to it, and tries to cut the apple, but I could only make a mark on it such as you see on a hot-cross-bun.
We waded so gently and reverently, or we pulled together so smoothly, that the fishes of thought were not scared from the stream, nor feared any angler on the bank, but came and went grandly, like the clouds which float through the western sky, and the mother-o'-pearl flocks which sometimes form and dissolve there.
I still read and spoke of Shelley with a rapture of joy, he was still my soul. But this craft, fashioned of mother-o'-pearl, with starlight at the helm and moonbeams for sails, suddenly ran on a reef and went down, not out of sight, but out of the agitation of actual life. The reef was Gautier; I read "Mdlle. de Maupin." The reaction was as violent as it was sudden.
The stalls were gorgeous with lemon-coloured slippers, stiff red shoes, scarlet boots with tops and tassels and hangings, which form part of the Bedawin dress. There was a marqueterie bazar, where one found many lovely things inlaid with choice woods, mother-o'-pearl, and steel. And there was the gold and silver bazar, where the smiths sat round in little pens, hammering at their anvils.
They had not given up their weapons yet, but the gipsies were between them and the door, and even the gipsy women were armed to the teeth and willing to do battle. I caught sight of Maga's mother-o'-pearl plated revolver, and the Turkish officer at whom she had it leveled did not look inclined to dispute the upper hand. "You Germans are all alike," sneered Kagig. "A dog could read your reasoning.
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