hill-fed torrent that brawls through the little city under pretty bridges
within walls of solid masonry, they found themselves in almost the only
vehicle on a brilliant promenade thronged with a cosmopolitan world.
Germans in every manner of misfit; Polish Jews in long black gabardines,
with tight corkscrew curls on their temples under their black velvet
derbys; Austrian officers in tight corsets; Greek priests in flowing
robes and brimless high hats; Russians in caftans and Cossacks in
Astrakhan caps, accented the more homogeneous masses of western
Europeans, in which it would have been hard to say which were English,
French or Italians. Among the vividly dressed ladies, some were
imaginably Parisian from their chic costumes, but they might easily have
been Hungarians or Levantines of taste; some Americans, who might have
passed unknown in the perfection of their dress, gave their nationality
away in the flat wooden tones of their voices, which made themselves
heard above the low hum of talk and the whisper of the innumerable feet.

The omnibus worked its way at a slow walk among the promenaders going and
coming between the rows of pollard locusts on one side and the bright
walls of the houses on the other. Under the trees were tables, served by
pretty bareheaded girls who ran to and from the restaurants across the
way. On both sides flashed and glittered the little shops full of silver,
glass, jewelry, terracotta figurines, wood-carvings, and all the idle
frippery of watering-place traffic: they suggested Paris, and they
suggested Saratoga, and then they were of Carlsbad and of no place else
in the world, as the crowd which might have been that of other cities at
certain moments could only have been of Carlsbad in its habitual effect.

"Do you like it?" asked Burnamy, as if he owned the place, and Mrs. March
saw how simple-hearted he was in his reticence, after all. She was ready
to bless him when they reached the hotel and found that his interest had