Something must be done; we could not patiently bear this. Perhaps it was a Utopian form of fire alarm, and we were doomed to cremation in our mosquito-netting unless we roused ourselves. At this moment our door burst open, and a fellow-traveller from Vera Cruz, in purple silk pyjamas, his hair on end, a wild look in his eyes, cried out, "Do you hear those awful bells?" Bells! Surely--we rubbed our eyes and gazed open-mouthed at him--surely they weren't bells! What superhuman intelligence was this he showed at such an early hour. We listened. Yes, they were (that anvil note again!) meant for--bells; bells as cracked as any March hare; the cathedral bells too, pounding their awful tea-tray notes right across the plaza into our windows. We had never heard such bells; nobody outside Yucatan ever has. It was bedlam in the belfry, and with our fingers in our ears we walked on to the balcony to see how the Utopianites were bearing them. Merida was up, and did not seem to mind the bells a bit. Perhaps they are an acquired taste; the people in the streets seemed not to notice the noise, and there was as much crowd as there was din. This bell scandal was evidently the rift within the Utopian lute; and presently, thank heaven! the music _was_ dumb, and we were able to watch in peace from our point of vantage the life of the awakening city. It was a picturesque scene. The street was alight with bright colours and pretty faces. The women of Merida were going to early mass. Here were a knot of palefaced maidens in muslins, rainbow-hued in their variety, pale blue, rose pink, saffron, heliotrope, white or green--hatless, their raven-black hair decked with flowers, their service books clasped in small hands. These were the upper middle-class femininity of the city (the wealthiest women never walk at all). But a prettier picture still were the Mestizas (half-castes, the name given by the wealthier Yucatecans to their lowlier sisters), the beauties of the people, whose soft skins were coloured a sweet brown by their Indian blood. Their dress was a long spotlessly white softly-flowing shift of linen, bordered at neck and hem with embroidery, cut open low round the neck, and with no sleeves and exposing their bare feet and ankles. It was a costume which framed their charms in quite a perfect style. And with all these mingled the Indian women and girls, their complexions a warm reddish brown, their black hair draped in cotton wraps of blue or brown, green or pink, thrown sari-fashion round the head and falling over the shoulders; their bare feet, innocent of shoe tortures, small and dainty, if a little broad. There were few men and boys about, but those looked cleaner than ever--spotless in their linens, with felt hats or panamas; the laddies, in their tight linen knickerbockers with their plump bare brown legs, looking the picture of boyish health. As the hour wore on, Indian dames passed on their way homeward from the early market,