h you would not confidently have
pronounced to be Spanish, if you had met it at the North Pole.

Dick and I sat down at a little table and began to talk in English, while
round us on every side the Spanish language--pure Castilian, and slipshod,
mellifluous Andaluz--gushed forth like a golden fountain.

Hunger, long unappeased, at first inclined Dick to a cynical view of life
in general, and Spanish hotel life in particular, but his temper improved
as the meal went on, and he even forgave me for deserting a starving man.

"No sign of the O'Donnels," said he. "Perhaps they've a private
dining-room."

"I doubt there's one in the house," said I.

"Well, I'll inquire later," Dick went on. "I've looked at every face here,
and--"

"At one in particular," I cut in.

Dick reddened. "I hope I haven't been staring," said he; "but she _is_ the
ideal Spanish girl, isn't she? If I were an artist, I'd want to paint
her." As he spoke, his eyes wandered towards the table next ours, which,
since a dish of Spanish peppers, rice, and chicken made a man of him, had
monopolized all the attention he could spare from dinner.

I had noticed this; hence my gibe. But Dick was not far wrong about the
girl.

Her place at the table put her opposite him; and her companion was a
rotund, brown man, with the beaming face of a middle-aged cherub, and the
habit of murmuring his contributions to the conversation in an Andalucian
voice, with an Andalucian accent mellifluous as Andalucian honey.

The girl herself was true Andaluza, too, though of a very different type
from the cherubic person who (Dick hoped) was her father. No such brown
stars of eyes ever opened to the world outside Andalucia; nor did any save
an Andaluza know, without being taught, how to give such liquid, yet
innocent, glances as those, which occasionally sparkled from under her
long lashes for Dick, when the Cherub was not looking.

She was a slim young thing, with a heart-shaped face of an engaging olive
pallour; a pretty, self-conscious mouth, which changed bewitchingly from
moment to moment; and heavy masses of dark hair piled high after the
Spanish fashion, as if to suit a mantilla--hair so smooth and glossy that,
from a little distance, it had the effect of being carved from a block of
ebony.

"She's perfect of her kind," said I; "but I thought you preferred American
types."

"Rot!" said Dick. "Comparisons are odious. I say, thank Heaven for a
pretty girl, whatever