It
Was A Glad Clash Of Greetings Which None Of Us Tried To Make Coherent Or
Intelligible, And Could Not If We Had Tried.
They acclaimed their hotel,
and I ours; but on both sides I dare say we had our reserves; and then
we parted, secure that the kind chances of travel would bring us
together again somewhere.
I did not visit the palace, but the Royal Armory I had seen two days
before on a gay morning that had not yet sorrowed to the afternoon's
rain. At the gate of the palace I fell into the keeping of one of the
authorized guides whom I wish I could identify so that I could send the
reader to pay him the tip I came short in. It is a pang to think of the
repressed disappointment in his face when in a moment of insensate
sparing I gave him the bare peseta to which he was officially entitled,
instead of the two or three due his zeal and intelligence; and I
strongly urge my readers to be on their guard against a mistaken
meanness like mine. I can never repair that, for if I went back to the
Royal Armory I should not know him by sight, and if I sought among the
guides saying I was the stranger who had behaved in that shabby sort,
how would that identify me among so many other shabby strangers? He had
the intelligence to leave me and the constant companion of these travels
to ourselves as we went about that treasury of wonders, but before we
got to the armory he stayed us with a delicate gesture outside the court
of the palace till a troop for the guard-mounting had gone in.
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