The Elder Of The
Daughters Had Some Useful French, And Neither Of The Younger Ladies Ever
Stayed For Some Ultimate Details Of Dishabille In Coming To Interpret
The Mother And Ourselves To One Another When We Encountered Her Alone In
The Office.
They were all thoroughly kind and nice, and they were
supported with surpassing intelligence and ability by the _chico,_ a
radiant boy of ten, who united in himself the functions which the
amiable inefficiency of the porters and waiters abandoned to him.
When we came out to dinner after settling ourselves in our almost
obtrusively accessible rooms, we were convinced of the wisdom of our
choice of a hotel by finding our dear Chilians at one of the tables. We
rushed together like two kindred streams of transatlantic gaiety, and in
our mingled French, Spanish, and English possessed one another of our
doubts and fears in coming to our common conclusion. We had already seen
a Spanish gentleman whom we knew as a fellow-sufferer at Burgos, roaming
the streets of Valladolid, and in what seemed a disconsolate doubt,
interrogating the windows of our hotel; and now we learned from the
Chilians that he had been bitterly disappointed in the inn which a
patrician omnibus had borne him away to from our envious eyes at the
station. We learned that our South American compatriots had found their
own chosen hotel impossible, and were now lodged in rapturous
satisfaction under our roof. Their happiness penetrated us with a glow
of equal content, and confirmed us in the resolution always to take the
worst omnibus at a Spanish station as the sure index of the best hotel.
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