noon
The heavy drowsiness of a mid-winter noon had depopulated her booths and bazaars and quieted the quaint traffic of her squares . In the shadows of the city her porters drowsed , and from the continuous wall of houses blankly facing one another from either side of the streets , there came no sound . Each household sought the breezes on the balconies that galleried the inner walls of the courts , or upon the pillared and canopied housetops . Memphis had eaten and drunk and , sheltered behind her screens , waited for the noon to pass . Mentu , the king 's sculptor , however , had not availed himself of the hour of ease . He did not labor because he must , for his house stood in the aristocratic portion of Memphis , and it was storied , galleried , screened and topped with its breezy pavilion . Within the hollow space , formed by the right and left wings of his house , the chamber of guests to the front , and the property wall to the rear , was a court of uncommon beauty .