In honor of the capital the other ladies wore white gloves too, but the
husband and brother still kept the straw hat which I had first known him
in at San Sebastian, and which I hope yet to know him by in New York. It
was a glad clash of greetings which none of us tried to make coherent or
intelligible, and could not if we had tried. They acclaimed their hotel,
and I ours; but on both sides I dare say we had our reserves; and then
we parted, secure that the kind chances of travel would bring us
together again somewhere.
I did not visit the palace, but the Royal Armory I had seen two days
before on a gay morning that had not yet sorrowed to the afternoon's
rain. At the gate of the palace I fell into the keeping of one of the
authorized guides whom I wish I could identify so that I could send the
reader to pay him the tip I came short in. It is a pang to think of the
repressed disappointment in his face when in a moment of insensate
sparing I gave him the bare peseta to which he was officially entitled,
instead of the two or three due his zeal and intelligence; and I
strongly urge my readers to be on their guard against a mistaken
meanness like mine.
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