Familiar Spanish Travels by William Dean Howells
page 56 of 311 (18%)
page 56 of 311 (18%)
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hotel managed by a mother and two daughters, who gave the orders obeyed
by the men-servants, and did not rebuke them for joining in the assurance that when we got used to going so abruptly from the dining-room into our bedrooms we would like it. The elder of the daughters had some useful French, and neither of the younger ladies ever stayed for some ultimate details of dishabille in coming to interpret the mother and ourselves to one another when we encountered her alone in the office. They were all thoroughly kind and nice, and they were supported with surpassing intelligence and ability by the _chico,_ a radiant boy of ten, who united in himself the functions which the amiable inefficiency of the porters and waiters abandoned to him. When we came out to dinner after settling ourselves in our almost obtrusively accessible rooms, we were convinced of the wisdom of our choice of a hotel by finding our dear Chilians at one of the tables. We rushed together like two kindred streams of transatlantic gaiety, and in our mingled French, Spanish, and English possessed one another of our doubts and fears in coming to our common conclusion. We had already seen a Spanish gentleman whom we knew as a fellow-sufferer at Burgos, roaming the streets of Valladolid, and in what seemed a disconsolate doubt, interrogating the windows of our hotel; and now we learned from the Chilians that he had been bitterly disappointed in the inn which a patrician omnibus had borne him away to from our envious eyes at the station. We learned that our South American compatriots had found their own chosen hotel impossible, and were now lodged in rapturous satisfaction under our roof. Their happiness penetrated us with a glow of equal content, and confirmed us in the resolution always to take the worst omnibus at a Spanish station as the sure index of the best hotel. The street-cars, which in Valladolid are poetically propelled through |
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