The boy retorted by saying that anybody could see what she was, and that her mother was probably sorry that she had ever been born, etc., etc.
No English quarrel could have gone to half the length that this proceeded. We were waiting to see either the boy jump into the carriage and shake the life out of "Darkey," or to see "Darkey" spring, like the young tiger-cat she was, at the boy and scratch his face. But nothing happened. The crowded corridor listened with delight to the progress of the quarrel.
The train stopped at a station. "Darkey" had sat up to pulverize the impertinent youth with some evil retort. The carriage door on the opposite side opened, and a placid, middle-aged peasant woman, followed by an ancient peasant man, stepped into the carriage, and before "Darkey" had well discovered what was happening had squashed down in the disputed seat, left vacant by the removal of "Darkey's" feet. The woman grinned at us all and sat nursing a large basket on her lap.
Then the quarrel slowly died down. After a while the boy went away. However, he came back again whenever he had thought of something good, and barked it round the corner of the door at "Darkey," who, usually taken by surprise, could find nothing to retort before he had lost himself again in the crowd.
The peasant woman smiled at us all, and, opening her basket, handed to each of us a large peach. She selected one especially big for "Darkey," presumably as refreshment after the tiring argument.
The day became hotter and hotter. The dust gathered more thickly on to the French girl's poor little curls. When the train stopped, children ran up and down beside the carriages, selling water at the price of "one little bitch" the glass. We were now in the province of Murcia, and the scenery put on the characteristic appearance of that province, tall bare hills of an ochreous mauve, sloping down into a flat, irrigated, fertile valley. The division between mountain and valley, between the "desert and the strown" was as sharp as though drawn with the full brush of a Japanese. On the mountains were dead remnants of Saracen castles, of dismantled Spanish robber fortresses, and the white or coloured buildings of monasteries which still lived sparkling in the sun