Then ensued another dreary wait, and at last, three hours late, the train drew out of Alcantarilla.
As soon as we were well under way, the youth said: "I'm off to a second-class carriage."
He opened the carriage door, got down on to the running board and clambered off. After half an hour he returned.
"They collect tickets round about here," he said.
Sure enough within ten minutes came the ticket collector.
The train stopped at a station. The youth got out on to the platform with a carriage whip and a square parcel, which he handed to a waiting man, for which service he received money. This he did at other stations, and gradually we realized what was his occupation. In one part of Murcia we had noted shops which called themselves Agencies. They had large notices saying, "Commissions for Lorca, for Barcelona, for Zaragoza, etc., etc."
We had not understood their purport, but by some jump of intuition connected the youth with these shops. He was the only Spanish substitute for the parcels post.
At Totana two gipsy women came into the carriage, very friendly and talkative. At the next station the two workmen left us. In the carriage they had appeared good-humoured, inadequate morsels of humanity. But they descended into the bosoms of their family. Wives and daughters crowded round them and seized and shouldered their bags, packs, sacks and implements. The men seemed to swell out like a dry thing cast into water, blooming like a dead sea lily as they stood receiving the caresses of their womenfolk. The last we saw of the more insignificant of the two was a picture of him striding like a king along the dusty road to the village with his family in humble though happy procession behind. Well does the Spanish proverb say, "It is better to be the head of a mouse than the tail of a lion."
Two gendarmes—greenish khaki in uniform, with the schoolgirlish helmets—armed with rifles took the place of the peasants. The younger gipsy woman addressed them. One of the gendarmes grunted, the other glared his eye round and said nothing. Again she made a remark, and again there was no reply. Then she said: