As we left our front window open during the night for air, we were many times awakened by the voices of the picture-gazers who gathered at our window as soon as the day broke
FOOTNOTES:
[14] "She has painted my donkey, my donkey."
[15] £8.
[16] 8s. 4d.
[CHAPTER XVI]
VERDOLAY—CONENI
The peasant who came every morning with his daughter and donkey-cart full of vegetables and fruit at the dawn was rather like a genial bird of prey in features. This type is typically Spanish. There was something of the condor about him, though one can scarcely picture a condor with his welcoming smile or his kindly nature. He began with a fixed idea of our practical dumbness and deafness to the Spanish language. He was, we learned later, an exquisite dancer. We have heard tell of a well-known musician who has a dance for making the household beds, and another for digging potatoes, and so on, trying to bring æsthetics into the commonplaces of life. Coneni, for such was the peasant's name, tried to dance for us the fact that tomatoes were a halfpenny a pound or that a melon was sixpence. His pretty, demure daughter resorted to more practical measures, held up fruit as samples and condescended to calculate in pesetas and centimos instead of in "royals" and "little bitches."