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54 DAYS IN THE SUN
laughing, on the platform. He comes back to the
compartment. The old woman looks after him with
tears in her eyes and says aloud to some youngsters,
possibly her grandchildren, as they greet her: “How
kind he was to me, an old wretch—and yet he never lay
by me!”
Although we have barely entered the new year, it is
warm as summer and the dust whirls up from the road-
bed and tickles our nostrils. Whenever we sneeze,
the well-dressed persons say: “To your health!’ while
those with the blankets say: “Jesus, Maria y José!”
which exposes their rural origin. But they address
each other as caballero and hospitably offer one a
share in their frugal meal: some bread and a piece of
apple or melon. A leather pouch containing wine cir-
culates over the partitions; it passes from mouth to
mouth, the consumers holding it above them at arm’s
length, as the liquid curve descends into their mouths.
We proffer our lunch baskets to those around us,
which immediately puts us in good grace. With their
great curved knives they cut off little slices of our
pastry and eat of it, but they definitely decline meat
and eggs.
“Carramba!”’—they say to each other—‘“‘the deuce
you say! are these people Englishmen? ‘They are al-
most as well behaved as we are.”
“No, we are from Denmark.”
“From where? Denmark! I know! That is a
province in northern Spain?”
“No, it is a country by itself far to the north of
northern Spain.”
“But they speak Spanish there, do they not?”
“Not at all. They speak Danish.”
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