Remembering our British standard I was dumb.
Though Majorca was free from fog, sometimes on an absolutely windless morning a light mist would envelop Palma and the smoke from the works in the Calle de la Fábrica would hang heavy in the still air. Then the Boy would hasten to say that we might be in Bradford—a town, by the way, that he knows only by repute. But with the rising of even the faintest breeze the highest spires of the Cathedral would appear out of the mist as though, through some supernal agency, they were suspended in mid-air. Then gradually, as if a veil were being slowly drawn aside, the city would again become visible.
With early February our radiant weather returned, and heads were shaken, for the young crops showed sign of wilting under the long-continued drought. Over a period of fifteen days the churches sent up special petitions for rain—petitions that must have been echoed in the heart of every man that owned a "possession," or farmed a patch of ground, or even rented a garden plot.
We were at Sóller when for two days and two nights the rain fell incessantly, soaking the parched soil and transforming the dry torrentes into raging rivers. Then it suddenly ceased, leaving us with the glory of snow-tipped mountains seen against a glowing blue sky.
Late in March and early in April rain again fell, delaying the annual ceremony of the Swearing to the Flag, but making the spindling corn fill out in a magical fashion and the beans that had begun to shrivel and blacken become erect and juicy. When we left Majorca on the last day of April all fears of the fate of the crops had been removed; figs and vines were budding, almond-trees were luxuriant in foliage, and the far-spreading meadows were covered with grain that gave promise of a rich harvest.
We had thought vegetables and fruit so cheap that it astonished us to hear the natives declare that now prices would fall—that it was through the past two successive dry summers that they had risen so high!
Residents told us that for nine months out of the year the weather in Palma might be relied upon to be delightful, but that during the three hot months—which were July, August, and September—the moist, damp heat was very relaxing. Then it is that the aristocracy, temporarily vacating their sombre palaces in the narrow streets, remove their entire establishment to one or other of their country seats, while people of smaller social importance flock to their villas at the Terreno, or Porto Pi, or Son Rapiña, or even to modest cottages at our little Son Españolet.
To us there seemed something funny in the notion of people having coast residences that were within a twopence-halfpenny car-drive of their town homes. But it is undoubtedly pleasant to live in a land where, by a change of locality entailing, at the most, a two hours' drive, one can avoid any extreme of either heat or cold.