The day was on the whole favourable, though not so hazeless as yesterday ; the hour, I guess, about nine o'clock. I distinctly made out houses, farms, Aviemore Inn, and the Spey, in Speyside […]

He answered me in his characteristically thick Creole patois.

Jacek turned his back to the streetcar, from the yellow windows of the restaurant the lament of an accordion and near the door the sad figure of his neighbor Mestek in his green windbreaker with a hood sitting over a melancholy plate of kipper and a glass of stale beer, Jacek downed two double slivovitzes, tripe soup, herring and onions, ten ounces of sausage, and three beers, and quietly returned home.

Two mountain laurels were in bloom.