A Judgment upon Parsimony 



when you depart, your farewell is, " Oueden V°"*®^' con 

 Dios."i '" 



Soon after leaving the venta^ I turned off the main road 

 along a bridle-way slanting to the right, and leading to a 

 village with a white tower. The path was crossed by a 

 stream six or seven yards wide and a foot deep. A peasant 

 appeared unforeseenly, and offered to carry me across for a 

 halfpenny ; but I thought it would be derogatory to my 

 vagabond character to accept his services ; so, taking off my 

 shoes and stockings, and doubling up my trousers, I waded 

 in. About the middle I found it rather deeper than I had 

 calculated, and in twitching up a corner of my plaid, which 

 was trailing in the water, one of my shoes dropped, and was 

 floating away in the ripples, when, making a dash for it, I 

 lost one of my socks, and gained the further bank only one 

 dry foot better that if I had walked through. The peasant 

 whose services I had rejected grinned over my misfortunes 

 as a judgment upon my parsimony. 



I shook the water out of my shoe, and wrung the sock as 

 dry as I could, and sat down on a sunny bank scruffling my 

 feet in the warm sand ; for dry sand will soak up water as it 

 does ink, and supply the place of a towel as well as blotting- 

 paper. By the time I had made and smoked a cigarilloy 

 the powerful sun of January had dried the sock to a wear- 

 able state, and I proceeded to the village of the white watch- 

 tower, whose name is Algaba, which, passing without adven- 

 ture, I came after a while to the banks of Guadalquivir. 



It now became matter of debate whether I should ascend 

 the river to Alcala (which was now in sight, but much 

 further off than it looked, because of an awkward bend of 

 the river, unless I could find means of crossing it in two 



" Vmd. and Vntdes. are contractions of Vuesa Merced (your wor- 

 ship), and its plural, — pronounced Uste and Ustedes. 



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