They at once offered us their glasses of wine.
"Gracias. Buen aproveche," said we in customary refusal. They offered cigarettes to Jan and Luis. These, by courtesy, had to be accepted.
While we were drinking our tepid beer—fizzed up with the carbonic acid gas—Jan asked for and bought a box of matches. The Spanish matches, very bad, a government monopoly, are packed in a small cardboard box. This box is quite difficult to open. Whichever way you push it, like the well-known trick matchbox, the inside part seems to have two bottoms and no opening. The impatient traveller usually tears the box to pieces trying to get at the forty matches which are inside.
Jan asked for tobacco.
"There is not," sighed the fat woman.
Outside the shop the two tramps were waiting for us. The swart one peered quickly from left to right.
"We have tobacco," he said in a hoarse whisper. He snapped his fingers at his companion, who produced from beneath the cloak, furtively, a square orange packet.
"Good tobacco from Gibraltar," growled "Swart"; "will you buy?"
"No," said Luis.