It Was
Not Very Active Life; Even The Cabmen Whose Neat Victorias Bordered The
Place On Three Sides Were Not
Eager for custom; they invited the
stranger, but they did not urge; there was a continual but not a rapid
Passing through the ample oblong; there was a good deal of still life on
the benches where leisure enjoyed the feathery shadow of the palms, for
the sun was apt to be too hot at the hour of noon, though later it
conduced to the slumber which in Spain accompanies the digestion of the
midday meal in all classes. As the afternoon advanced numbers of little
girls came into the plaza and played children's games which seemed a
translation of games familiar to our own country. One evening a small
boy was playing with them, but after a while he seemed to be found
unequal to the sport; he was ejected from the group and went off
gloomily to grieve apart with his little thumb in his mouth. The sight
of his dignified desolation was insupportable, and we tried what a
copper of the big-dog value would do to comfort him. He took it without
looking up and ran away to the peanut-stand which is always steaming at
the first corner all over Christendom. Late in the evening - in fact,
after the night had fairly fallen - we saw him making his way into a
house fronting on the plaza. He tried at the door with one hand and in
the other he held an unexhausted bag of peanuts.
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