The portly man pulled up at the watering trough in Palermo’s little square and grunted over the wheel. When the horses began to wallow in the tub, plunging their reeking noses almost to their eyes, he handed the reins to his wife and walked toward the store, his gaze upon a bunch of wilted bananas that dangled just inside the door. The six gaunt men in the shade surveyed this triple display of city avoirdupois with disfavour. Somehow it all seemed a silent boast of urban prosperity. “I don’t reckon his woman needs to hang onto them reins very tight,” grunted Uncle Lysimachus Buck. “It’s all them horses can do to walk with that load--much less run away.” “All city folks do is stuff themselves mornin’, noon and night, and then ’tween meals,” said Marriner Amazeen. “He’s after suthin’ to eat now, and I’ll bet ye on it.” “How much for a dozen of those bananas?” asked the rotund man, addressing the individual who stood so stiffly on the corner of the platform. “Wind sou’ by one p’int to the west, havin’ swung from west by nothe,” was the reply. He did not look at his questioner, but kept his head straight and his nose in the air. “That ain’t nothin’ but ’Quar’us havin’ a weather-vane spell,” apologised Brickett, appearing in the door and lounging against the side of the building. He drawled, “I’ll sell ye fifteen for a quarter. Help yourself.” The stranger broke off the fruit, stuffed it into his wide pockets, placed the change in Brickett’s languid palm, and went back to his carriage, casting an eye of scorn on the platform sentinel as he repassed him. Then he climbed painfully back to his seat. With a grunt he pulled the reluctant horses back from the trough, where they were now making pretence of drinking, sucked his tongue at them pantingly and proceeded on his “carriage tour of the coast.” As the horses plodded into the sun-glare from under the village elms, the portly man swung around and said to his wife and daughter: “The town pump and the town clock and the town fool, fifty houses bunched around ’em and everybody asleep! My God, think of living in a place like this all your life.” “The old man standing on the store platform wasn’t crazy, was he, papa?” the daughter inquired. “Why don’t you use your eyes once in a while, Belle?” the fat man snorted. “The way country towns let old lunatics run at large is something awful.” He whipped up and the surrey clattered across the bridge at the head of the cove. There was a puff of cool air from the shadows where the tide gurgled about the weedy piles, and the three people went on around the hill with the tang of the salt smell in their nostrils, and in their minds a totally erroneous idea of Palermo and one of its institutions.