to the top. We were in the season of
the olive harvest, and throughout the month of October its nearer lines
showed the sturdy trees weighed down by the dense fruit, sometimes
very small, sometimes as large as pigeon eggs. There were vineyards and
wheat-fields in that vast prospect, and certainly there were towns and
villages; but what remains with me is the sense of olives and ever more
olives, though this may be the cumulative effect of other such prospects
as vast and as monotonous.

While we looked away and away, the gardener and a half-grown boy were
about their labors that Sunday afternoon as if it were a week-day,
though for that reason perhaps they were not working very hard. They
seemed mostly to be sweeping up the fallen leaves from the paths, and
where the leaves had not fallen from the horse-chestnuts the boy was
assisting nature by climbing the trees and plucking them. We tried to
find out why he was doing this, but to this day I do not know why he
was doing it, and I must be content to contribute the bare fact to the
science of arboriculture. Possibly it was in the interest of neatness,
and was a precaution against letting the leaves drop and litter the
grass. There was apparently a passion for neatness throughout, which in
the villa itself mounted to ecstasy. It was in a state to be come and
lived in at any moment, though I believe it was occupied only in the
late spring and the early autumn; in winter the noble family went to
Madrid, and in summer to some northern watering-place. It was rather
small, and expressed a life of the minor hospitalities when the family
was in residence. It was no place for house-parties, and scarcely for
week-end visits, or even for neighborhood dinners. Perhaps on that
terrace there was afternoon ice-cream or chocolate for friends who rode
or drove over or out; it seemed so possible that we had to check in
ourselves the cozy impulse to pull up our shell-covered cement chairs to
some central table of like composition.

Within, the villa was of a spick-and-spanness which I feel that I have
not adequately suggested; and may I say that the spray of a garden-hose
seemed all that would be needed to put the place in readiness for
occupation? Not that even this was needed for that interior of tile and
marble, so absolutely apt for the climate and the use the place would
be put to. In vain we conjectured, and I hope not impertinently, the
characters and tastes of the absentees; the