A Handful of Dust

bought Miss de Vitré a woolen rabbit at the barber’s shop.

“How I wish I was a man,” said Thérèse de Vitré.

Tony told her about the expedition; of the Peruvian emigrants in the middle ages and their long caravan working through the mountains and forests, llamas packed with works of intricate craftsmanship; of the continual rumors percolating to the coast and luring adventurers up into the forests; of the route they would take up the rivers, then cutting through the bush along Indian trails and across untraveled country; of the stream they might strike higher up and how, Dr. Messinger said, they would make woodskin canoes and take to the water again; how finally they would arrive under the walls of the city like the Vikings at Byzantium. “But of course,” he added, “there may be nothing in it. It ought to be an interesting journey in any case.”