r Penelope would say about these goings on, if
they ever came to her ears, felt a tremendous elation flare through
him.

"Come on, they're dancing," he cried dragging Lyaeus out on the gallery
that overhung the end of the court.

"Don't forget the butterfly net, Tel."

"What for?"

"To catch your gesture, what do you think?"

Telemachus caught Lyaeus by the shoulders and shook him. As they
wrestled they caught glimpses of the courtyard full of couples bobbing
up and down in a _jota_. In the doorway stood two guitar players and
beside them a table with pitchers and glasses and a glint of spilt
wine. Feeble light came from an occasional little constellation of
olive-oil lamps. When the two of them pitched down stairs together and
shot out reeling among the dancers everybody cried out: "_Hola_," and
shouted that the foreigners must sing a song.

"After dinner," cried Lyaeus as he straightened his necktie. "We
haven't eaten for a year and a half!"

The _padron_, a red thick-necked individual with a week's white
bristle on his face, came up to them holding out hands as big as hams.

"You are going to Toledo for Carnival? O how lucky the young are,
travelling all over the world." He turned to the company with a
gesture; "I was like that when I was young."

They followed him into the kitchen, where they ensconced themselves on
either side of a cave of a fireplace in which burned a fire all too
small. The hunchbacked woman with a face like tanned leather who was
tending the numerous steaming pots that stood about the hearth,
noticing that they were shivering, heaped dry twigs on it that crackled
and burst into flame and gave out a warm spicy tang.

"To-morrow's Carnival," she said. "We mustn't stint ourselves." Then
she handed them each a plate of soup full of bread in which poached
eggs floated, and the _padron_ drew the table near the fire and sat
down opposite them, peering with interest into their faces while they
ate.

After a while he began talking. From outside the hand-clapping and the
sound of castanettes continued interrupted by intervals of shouting and
laughter and an occasional snatch from the song that ended every verse
with "_y manana Carnaval_."

"I travelled when I was your age," he said. "I have been to America ...
Nueva York, Montreal, Buenos Aires, Chicago, San Francisco.... Selling
those little nuts.... Yes, peanuts. What a country! How many laws there
are there, how many policemen. When I w