When he got out at a station obscured past identification by its
flaring lamps, he would not suffer me to help him with his hand-baggage;
while he deplored my offered civility, he reassured me by patting my
back at parting. Yet I myself had to endure the kindness which he would
not when we arrived at Cordova, where two young fellows, who had got in
at a suburban station, helped me with our bags and bundles quite as if
they had been two young Americans.
V
Somewhere at a junction our train had been divided and our car, left the
last of what remained, had bumped and threatened to beat itself to
pieces during its remaining run of fifteen miles. This, with our long
retard at Santa Elena, and our opportune defense from the depraved
descendants of the reforming German colonists by the Guardias Civiles,
had given us a day of so much excitement that we were anxious to have it
end tranquilly at midnight in the hotel which we had chosen from, our
Baedeker. I would not have any reader of mine choose it again from my
experience of it, though it was helplessly rather wilfully bad;
certainly the fault was not the hotel's that it seemed as far from the
station as Cordova was from Madrid.
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