English-built clothes; a brick affair of Georgian influences and splendid
lines, housed the hardware needed by the Butterflies, and the milliner's
was a replica of the pyramid of Cestus.

The bank was the Vatican, with Swiss guards in the doorway.

Perpetual waste motion! In all the town not one building that connoted to
Warble the apotheosis of efficiency shown by the King Alfred tossing cakes
in the window of Bairns' Restaurant. Not a dozen buildings that even
suggested use in addition to their beauty.

And the street was cluttered with trees in tubs, window boxes, sudden
little fountains or statues; gilded wicker birdcages on tall poles--songs
issuing therefrom.

Arbors, covered with pink Dorothy Perkinses, here and there by the
curbside. And, worst of all, people sitting idle in the arbors. Idle!

She wouldn't have cared so much, if the people had been busy--even one of
them. She fought herself. "I must be wrong. It can't be as silly as it
looks! It can't!"

She went home and found Petticoat waiting for her.

"Like the burg, eh? Great stuff, what? Not an eyesore inside the city wall.
Good work, I'll megaphone."

Warble sat down in an easy-going chair--so easy, it slid across the room
with her, and collided with a life-sized Chinese lady of yellow stone.