noon
There was a true and vital companionship among them . He passed on with deliberation , observing closely , yet half-lazily -- for his brain was slack and needed rest -- the different types about him , musing on the possibilities of their lives , smiling at the gambols of the intent girls , and the impudent frolics of the little boys who seemed the very spawn of sand and sea and sun , till he had nearly passed the harbor , and was opposite to the pathway that leads down to the jetty , to the left of which lie the steam-yachts . At the entrance to this pathway there is always a knot of people gathered about the shanty where the seamen eat maccaroni and strange messes , and the stands where shell-fish are exposed for sale . On the far side of the tramway , beneath the tall houses which are let out in rooms and apartments for families , there is an open space , and here in summer are set out quantities of strong tables , at which from noon till late into the evening the people of Mergellina , and visitors of the humbler classes from Naples , sit in merry throngs , eating , smoking , drinking coffee , syrups , and red and white wine . Artois stood still for a minute to watch them , to partake from a distance , and unknown to them , in their boisterous gayety . He had lit a big cigar , and puffed at it as his eyes roved from group to group , resting now on a family party , now on a quartet of lovers , now on two stout men obviously trying to drive a bargain with vigorous rhetoric and emphatic gestures , now on an elderly woman in a shawl spending an hour with her soldier son in placid silence , now on some sailors from a ship in the distant port by the arsenal bent over a game of cards , or a party of workmen talking wages or politics in their shirt-sleeves with flowers above their ears . What a row they made , these people !