Antlike

On the flat behind the mill, dawn-rising Chinamen shogged with nimble bare feet under their yoke-linked watering-cans. These busy brethren, meeting sometimes on the same narrow track, would pause, ant-like, seemingly to dumbly regard one another and their burdens, then, still ant-like, pass silently to their work.

Standing, almost antlike, in the middle of Franco Zeffirelli ’s oversize set for “La Bohème,” however, he pushed uncomfortably.