That evening the young voices and the young feet began to chirp again
under our sun balcony. But there had been no sun in it since noon and
presently a cold thin rain was falling and driving the promenaders under
the arcades, where they were perhaps not unhappier for being closely
massed. We missed the prettiness of the spectacle, though as yet we did
not know that it was the only one of the sort we might hope to see in
Spain, where women walk little indoors, and when they go out, drive and
increase in the sort of loveliness which may be weighed and measured.
Even under the arcades the promenade ceased early and in the adjoining
Plaza Mayor, where the _autos da fe_ once took place, the rain still
earlier made an end of the municipal music, and the dancing of the
lower ranks of the people. But we were fortunate in our Chilian friend’s
representation of the dancing; he came to our table at dinner, and did
with charming sympathy a mother waltzing with her babe in arms for a
partner.
He came to the omnibus at the end of the promenade, when we were
starting for the station next morning, not yet shaven, in his friendly
zeal to make sure of seeing us off, and we parted with confident
prophecies of meeting each other again in Madrid. We had already bidden
adieu with effusion to our landlady-sisters-and-mother, and had wished
to keep forever our own the adorable _chico_ who, when cautioned against
trying to carry a very heavy bag, valiantly jerked it to his shoulder
and made off with it to the omnibus, as if it were nothing. I do not
believe such a boy breathes out of Spain, where I hope he will grow up
to the Oriental calm of so many of his countrymen, and rest from the
toils of his nonage. At the last moment after the Chilian had left us,
we perceived that one of our trunks had been forgotten, and the _chico_
coursed back to the hotel for it and returned with the delinquent porter
bearing it, as if to make sure of his bringing it.
When it was put on top of the omnibus, and we were in probably
unparalleled readiness for starting to the station, at an hour when
scarcely anybody else in Valladolid was up, a mule composing a portion
of our team immediately fell down, as if startled too abruptly from a
somnambulic dream. I really do not remember how it was got to its feet
again; but I remember the anguish of the delay and the fear that we
might not be able to escape from Valladolid after all our pains in
trying for the Sud-Express at that hour; and I remember that when we
reached the station we found that the Sud-Express was forty minutes
behind time and that we were a full hour after that before starting for
Madrid.