"Very good, sir," and they were off at a lively rate, rattling quite
gaily over the cobble-stones.
Pingari's is the jumping-off place. It stands at the sharp corner of
an elbow in the mountain, with an almost sheer drop of a thousand
feet into the quarries below. A low-roofed, rambling building, once
used as a troop-house for nomadic fighting-men who came from all
parts of the principality on draft by feudal barons in the days
before real law obtained, it was something of a historic place. Parts
of the structure are said to be no less than five hundred years old,
but time and avarice have relegated history to a rather uncertain
background, and unless one is pretty well up in the traditions of the
town, he may be taken in nicely by shameless attendants who make no
distinction between the old and the new so long as it pays them to
procrastinate.
As a matter of fact, the walls of the ancient troop-house surround
what is now considered the kitchen, and one never steps inside of
them unless he happens to be connected in a somewhat menial way with
the green grocer, the fish-monger, the butcher or the poultry-man.
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