No one made any comment upon this inexplicable proceeding. Had the inoffending pipkin not been empty it might have seemed as though he were offering a libation to some unseen spirit of the water. But the actively plied spoons had succeeded in scooping out the last vestige of the soup.
In the meantime we had been occupied with our second course, which consisted of lengths of orange-coloured sausage, served hot with fried potatoes. And a new-comer, an old man, was eating a big plate of macaroni.
The nimble Catalina, flashing out, set a flat dish, heaped with some sort of stew, before the trio. What its contents were we could only guess. The lively maiden and the man were already poking among them with their wooden forks. The pensive girl had produced a silver fork and was delicately helping herself, fastidiously turning over the ingredients. The handsome reticent man sat motionless but observant.
They ate in leisurely fashion—nobody hurries in Palma. The gay girl rattled on in her musical voice, gesticulating with her pretty hands the while, only occasionally dropping the thread of her dramatic recital to send her fork foraging with the others, or to throw back her head and let the red wine trickle down her throat.
"Will he throw that dish away when it is empty?" we were wondering, when the señora, who was making a special effort on our behalf, appeared in person carrying a tempting combination of sweet peppers and young pork.
The question answered itself. When they had finished, the dish stood empty and ignored. The wine flask was refilled, and when we had paid our score—wine included, it came to about sevenpence each—we left the quartette still sitting under the flickering light by the edge of the unseen waves: the charming girl still lively, the pretty one distraite, the fisherman amiable, and the handsome listener still silently attentive.
It had been an odd little interlude—nothing to relate, indeed, but one of those petty excursions beyond one's own stereotyped world that make the observers feel, for the moment, as though they were living in somebody else's life, not in their own.
We finished the evening at what chanced to be the popular entertainment. If I remember correctly, it combined the attractions of a cinematograph and a variety show.