Fortunately A Kind Lady Intervened With A Private Carriage And A
Coachman Shaved That Very Day, Whereas My Poor Old Cabman, Who Was Of
One And The Same Smell As His Cab, Had Not Been Shaved For Three Days.
III
This seems the place to note the fact that no Spaniard in humble life
shaves oftener than once in three days, and that you always see him on
the third day just before he has shaved.
But all this time I have left
myself sitting in the cafe looking out on the club that looks out on the
Calle de Aleala, and keeping the waiter waiting with a jug of hot milk
in his hand while I convince him (such a friendly, smiling man he is,
and glad of my instruction!) that in tea one always wants the milk cold.
To him that does not seem reasonable, since one wants it hot in coffee
and chocolate; but he yields to niy prejudice, and after that he always
says, _"Ah, leche fria!"_ and we smile radiantly together in the bond of
comradery which cold milk establishes between man and man in Spain. As
yet tea is a novelty in that country, though the young English queen,
universally loved and honored, has made it the fashion in high life.
Still it is hard to overcome such a prepossession as that of hot milk in
tea, and in some places you cannot get it cold for love or money.
But again I leave myself waiting in that cafe, where slowly, and at last
not very overwhelmingly in number, the beautiful plaster-pale Spanish
ladies gather with their husbands and have chocolate.
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