Running to a cupboard, Bartolomé had thrown open the door, disclosing shelves laden with china and crystal.
Again—"Look! señora."
Hastening to the opposite side of the room, he had opened the doors of a big armário, and was pointing to piles of clean table-linen.
It was as though we had strayed into some enchanted castle where all had been prepared for our coming by invisible hands. Going off to explore further, we found our way into a snug kitchen. The whole of one side was occupied by a brown-tiled charcoal stove, on which many dinners could have been cooked simultaneously. The shelves were laden with cooking-pots and pans, of every description; the walls shone with an array of well-polished utensils. Over charcoal embers a huge earthenware pot, that for its better preservation had been encased in a strait-waistcoat of wire-netting, was slowly bubbling.
Essaying to mount the stair leading from the hall, we peeped into closely shuttered apartments in which we could see the dim outlines of beds. And what we saw assured us of one thing—that there were no other guests at the Hospederia.
From the perfect order of the house, and the fact that the fire was burning, it was clear that someone must be close at hand. But we had come a long way, and in the meantime we were famishing.
Hastening to our aid, the ubiquitous Bartolomé spread the table, putting out plates and glasses, and finding wooden spoons and forks in the drawer of a side-table. Opening our packets of sandwiches and fruit, we invited him to join us.
We were all seated at table, busily eating, when a swift clatter of feet sounded on the cobble stones of the outer hall; and a brisk little brown woman ran into the room, voluble with apology for the temporary absence of the keepers of the Hospederia. Netta, she explained, was away. Fernando was working at the farm. In their absence could she be of any service to our excellencies?
Reassured on that point, the lady—Catalina was her name—remained to enliven our picnic lunch by rallying Bartolomé, who was an old acquaintance of hers, on his unparalleled effrontery in sitting down to table with us.
"You have no right to eat with their excellencies," she said. "You are only a coachman."