that rose from their progress, with the chirp and whisper of their feet
cheered the night as long as we watched and listened from the sun
balcony of our hotel.




II


There was no more heat in the radiators of the hotel there than at
Burgos, but for that evening at least there was none needed. It was the
principal hotel of Valladolid, and the unscrubbed and unswept staircase
by which we mounted into it was merely a phase of that genial pause, as
for second thought, in the march of progress which marks so much of the
modern advance in Spain, and was by no means an evidence of arrested
development. We had the choice of reaching our rooms either through the
dining-room or by a circuitous detour past the pantries; but our rooms
had a proud little vestibule of their own, with a balcony over the great
square, and if one of them had a belated feather-bed the other had a new
hair mattress, and the whole house was brilliantly lighted with
electricity. As for the cooking, it was delicious, and the table was of
an abundance and variety which might well have made one ashamed of
paying so small a rate as two dollars a day for bed and board, wine
included, and very fair wine at that.

In Spain you must take the bad with the good, for whether you get the
good or not you are sure of the bad, but only very exceptionally are you
sure of the bad only. It was a pleasure not easily definable to find our