ancestors and costumes
more wonderful than anybody else's, who dance strange dances in the
streets for money, and play a game called La Pelotte, which is great
sport to watch. And you walk by the sea, with its _real_ waves, like
ours at home, not little tuppenny-ha'penny ones like those I saw in the
English Channel; and you look across an opal bay through a creamy haze
to a mystic land made entirely of tumbled blue mountains. And then, one
of the best things about Biarritz is that you're next door to Spain. Ah,
that door of Spain! I've knocked and been in through it, but just across
the threshold. The way of it was like this--

I'd been up early and out to the golf course for a lesson from the
professional; when I came home a little before eleven Brown was waiting.
He wanted to know if I wouldn't care to have a peep at Spain, and said
that we could easily go there and back by dinner-time. Aunt Mary and I
were ready in a "jiffy," so was the car, and we were buzzing away along
a beautiful road (though a little "_accidentee_," as the French say)
near the ocean. There were the most lovely lights I ever saw on land or
sea, over the mountains and the great, unquiet Atlantic; and St. Jean de
Luz, which we came to in no time, as it seemed, was another charming
little watering-place for us to come and live if you get poor. A good
many English people do live there all the year round, and whom do you
think is one of them? George Gissing. You know how I made you read his
books, and you said they seemed so real that you felt you had got into
the people's houses by mistake, and ought to say "Excuse me"? Well, he
has come to live in St. Jean de Luz, the all-knowing Brown tells me. His
master admires Mr. Gissing very much, so the Honourable John must be a
nice and clever man.

As for history, Brown is an inexhaustible mine. I simply "put in my
thumb and pull out a plum." But I forgot--there _aren't_ usually plums
in mines, are there, except in the prospectuses? Anyhow, it was Brown
who made me realise what tremendously interesting things _frontiers_
are. That imaginary line, and then--people, language, costumes, and
customs changing as if a fairy had waved a wand. The frontier between
France and Spain is a great wide river--on purpose to give us another
bridge. Doesn't the name, "Bidassoa," suggest a broad, flowing current
running swiftly to the sea?

This time we would have none of the bridge. It was too much bother
paying duty on