When all leaves were taken and we were bowed out and away our horses,
covered with bells, burst with the omnibus through a solid mass of
beggars come to give us a last chance of meriting heaven by charity to
them, and dashed down the hill to the station. There we sat a long
half-hour in the wet evening air, wondering how we had been spared
seeing those wretches trampled under our horses' feet, or how the long
train of goats climbing to the city to be milked escaped our wheels. But
as we were guiltless of inflicting either disaster, we could watch with
a good conscience the quiescent industry of some laborers in the
brickyard beyond the track. Slowly and more slowly they worked, wearily,
apathetically, fetching, carrying, in their divided skirts of
cross-barred stuff of a rich Velasquez dirt color. One was especially
worthy of admiration from his wide-brimmed black hat and his thoughtful
indifference to his task, which was stacking up a sort of bundles of
long grass; but I dare say he knew what it all meant. Throughout I was
tormented by question of the precise co-racial quality of some
English-speaking folk who had come to share our bone-breaking return to
Madrid in the train so deliberately waiting there to begin afflicting
us. English English they certainly were not; American English as little.
If they were Australian English, why should not it have been a
convention of polite travel for them to come up and say so, and save us
that torment of curiosity? But perhaps they were not Australians.




VII

THE GREAT GRIDIRON OF ST. LAWRENCE