has just left his rooms at the Alhambra on
his way back to Bawstun. Lispin, the
admiralty agent, a languid official, who never
speaks if he can shrug his shoulders instead.
The Reverend Walter Monoculus, travelling
tutor, with the Honourable Sidney Limpet
would not fail, I knew, though now at Tarifa;
because the Honourable Sidney was on his
way back, post haste, to take a place in
the war office, kept for him by a noble relative;
and to which, I am sure, he will stick as
long as England remains a mummy swaddled
up in red tape. Then there was Herr
Schwartzenlicht, the German picture collector
with the Judas beard, who tormented me
before my time at the Murillo Gallery.

The excitement was beginning. It was four
o'clock, and the Club House Hotel was like
one immense boiling pot. The roof seemed
actually to shake with the agitated motion of
touters, odd men, and waiters. The roof
shook like the lid of a pot when the potatoes
are jogging up and bumping to get out.
The uncarpeted stairs were being played
upon by feet, as if they were the key-boards
of some perpendicular piano. Herr
Schwartzenlicht, whom I met going to dress, said:

"I should laike to baint your bordtrait,
but, mein Gott! dere is naow too much
egsitement."

Every now and then came from the
momentarily opened door of the kitchen an
angry hiss and bubble, as if the Furies were
stewing their snakes for a private dinner-
party for Pluto. Then there was, now and
then a tremendous smash of crockery, as if
some great altar of plates had been
collected and upset in sacrifice to the cook's
deity. Waiters with white cravats ran
about, giving one the impression of some
clerical Low-Church convent being sacked by
Papist troops. The landlord, too, shouts
orders as if he were addressing the soldiers
relieving guard in the square outside. I see,
as I go up-stairs to dress, solemn processions
of waiters, with melons, figs, peaches, and
small funeral piles of biscuits, filing into the
dining-room on the ground floor. The smell
is as of a Paradise of kitchens, and the shirt-
sleeved Spanish hangers-on grin and quote
proverbs about it. The telegraph at the
flagstaff now may toss its arms and fling up its
coloured pills as much as it likes, no one in
the Club House Hotel cares even to consult
the great Club House Hotel telescope, and
make out what all its fuss means.

I am dressing. Black. That curious coat,
with bird-like tails; white waistcoat, purer
than the snow that never has been driven
over; tie, a masterpiece of spotless intricacy.
I was half way down-stairs, and just opposite
the clock-case (one of those curious coffins of
dead time and cradles of the future and the
present that are still to be seen on end, grave
and sentinel-like in your English unadulterated
farmhouse).

Spanker, when reconnoitering me calmly
through his stony eye-glass, exclaimed, "Do
you know we are all assembled, and waiting
for you below? Look alive!"

I go down the long white tables, loaded
with plate and flowers and bottles. Ranks
of men in black guarded by waiters enfilade
the table. Major Hodgins is tremendous
and sublime; Herr Schwartzenlicht peery
and intent; Spanker serene; Driver merry;
Fortywinks regal; Niggle punctilious;
Fluker discursive; Doolan quiet and serene;
Naggle patient. They rise as I enter, and
a buzz of delight welcomes me through the
steam of the soup that is smoking like a
sacrifice of old Rome. The fish was a
wonderful study for the ichthyologist; it was
an epitome of all Adam named in Eden. To
look down the table and see the heads taking
wine across small thickets of épergnes and
flowers was a wonderful sight. The waiters
were electrified. The noise of corks plopping
out with a reluctant bang was as of perpetual
assassination at an Irish public dinner, where
they used to shoot a chairman at the end of
every course.

I parry the entrées, nod my head at the
patées, am cheered as I make allusions to
Old England, and am helped lazily to the
roast beef of Albion. There is incessant
taking wine: I take it even with Fluker,
who is vexed because I will not sit for a
second portrait, and who has a slight spot of
vermilion on his nose, which makes everyone
smile, which he attributes to his amusing
conversation about the scholastic theology of
Dante, and the proofs of his having known of
the existence of America. Bensaken is quietly
suggestive and deferential in his whispers.
Fortywinks is taking notes in a red-bound
book. He says to me, when we have nodded
together and taken wine:

"My book gets on, though slow, sir: it
grows—it grow. I shall enlighten the people
at home: Spain is quite a new field.
Suggestive country—very suggestive."

"That's what Ford says," says Niggle.
"You'll find that in Murray. I say, waiter,
run up for my Murray, Number Twenty-two."

The Spanish waiter looks round distressed
and surprised.

"You know, I suppose, what he says about
Gibraltar, that it is—- "

"Here is a traveller who swears by
Murray!" says Fortywinks, gravely. "To
think of men going by an old prejudiced
Tory, like Ford! What you quote was
altered after he left Spain twenty years ago."

"Well, but Murray says—-"

"Mr. Niggle," says Major Hodgins, with a
tremendous voice, "I must remind you that
it is the custom with us military men at Gib,
when we go tours in Spain, to fine any man
who quotes Murray one bottle of sherry."

"Murray's all rot," says Driver.

"We want a new book on Spain, my gentlemens,"
Rose remarks.