e lives of
the travelling menagerie; but our luggage had been carried to the rooms
which were now ready (thanks to the complaisance of the dazzled commercial
gentlemen), and there were garden seats, on which we settled ourselves in
spite of the chill in the evening air.

From the rooms above we heard laughter and ecstatic cries. Evidently the
warming-pan was making a sensation as it went its round, or something else
had happened; and when at last the girls trooped downstairs from the
balcony, I beckoned them to come our way. They skipped to us, wild with
delight at the prospect of pouring out their hearts to an appreciative
audience.

The great warming-pan, stuffed with embers that glowed and paled, was laid
on the tiled pavement while the girls wove themselves into a group, with
interlacing arms.

"Why are you so happy?" I asked

"Happy? We have been in paradise, with the angels," replied the prettiest
girl with crimson roses stuck in a bank of copper hair.

"There was but one angel," objected her brunette cousin.

"That is true. The two old ones think themselves everything, but they are
less than nothing. I would not change my years for theirs, with their
jewels and their quarterings. Thanks be to God, in our Spain, we are all
as noble as the nobles, or at least in this province!"

"You are also all beautiful!" said I.

"That you can say so, senor, after seeing that wonder!" exclaimed the
landlord's eldest daughter, a creature of carnation and flame. "Ah, the
joy of it, we have been undressing her!"

"If you could have seen her, with gold hair down to her knees!" gasped a
gypsy of fifteen. "And when we had got her dress off, and she was in her--"

"Hush, Micaela! it is not seemly that you should mention such garments in
the presence of senores!" broke in the girl of the copper coronet.

["Now you are as bad as I was, Mariquita!"]

NOW YOU ARE AS BAD AS I WAS, MARIQUITA

"But why, then, since they are most beautiful? You know well, Mariquita,
you yourself said they were like the handwork of fairies, and her
shoulders--"

"Be silent, foolish one, or I shall have to burn your nose off with the
warming-pan!"

"And what did the elder ladies say to the young lady's new maids?" I asked
quickly, as great eyes began to flash, and scarlet lips to pout.

Back came the smiles, and the maidens fell into a fit of schoolgirl
giggling.

"There was but one Majesty there, praise b