The children who had been so lucky as to secure front places to see the lions fed got good value. We were all thirsty; the coffee-pot was kept busy, the pile of bizcochos steadily diminished. When we had finished and went over to where Catalina had modestly resumed her lace weaving, the spectators changed their window the better to accommodate their desires to the altered conditions. When we said good-bye and left they accompanied us—babies and all. One gipsy-looking child ran in front, glancing back at us. The rest trotted in our wake, making occasional momentary delays to call round corners and into doorways for their friends to come and see the wild beasts.
When the circus, as the Squire called it, had reached the outskirts of the town, many of our adherents fell away. But a staunch band of eight or ten remained faithful, and not only escorted us on our walk and back to the car station, but whiled away the time by chanting and performing dances for our better entertainment, one male infant, known phonetically as Tomeow, gravely turning a succession of somersaults before us, and we wondered if the religious dances that are annually performed in the church on the feast of San Roch, the patron saint of the town, which occurs on the 16th of August, accounted for their rudimentary knowledge of the art.
Constant to the last, they formed a semicircle about us while we awaited the departure of the train, which took the place of the tram-car in which we had arrived, and listened wide-eared as we chatted with a corporal of the Civil Guard.
"The children of Alaró seem good," remarked the Lady, who has the gift of saying graceful things.
"Good—perhaps," allowed the corporal, frowning disapprovingly at our satellites, "but curious!"
There was no possible repetition of our delightful canalboat cruise of the morning. Night had fallen when we began the return journey in one of the smallest railway carriages in existence.
When we reached Palma rain was falling, and the view from the carriage window, of a wet platform with the lamplight falling on dripping umbrellas, vividly recalled the moist far-off land of our birth.
But a few hours later, when we left the Grand Hotel, where we had dined, the stars were shining above the dimly lit mediæval streets. Palma was herself again.