Genuine Goodwill 



hut, and its equally picturesque inhabitants, giving the old 

 woman a silver real. 



This sum, which is a shade more than twopence-halfpenny, 

 seemed to strike the whole family in heaps of gratitude and 

 astonishment. The old woman said they had done nothing 

 to deserve it, and the fisherman begged me to let him put 

 me across the river in his boat, that he might earn it with 

 some shadow of justice. But the shortest way to Seville 

 did not cross the river here, so I begged him to accept it 

 amistosamente (in a friendly manner), and' he might put me 

 across in his boat some other day, when I returned on my 

 way to Alcala. I had previously won the little boy's heart 

 with a few cigarillos^ so that I departed with a greater mass 

 of genuine goodwill and hearty benedictions than I suppose 

 are usually purchased for twopence-halfpenny. 



Cutting across the fields to another angle of the river, I 

 passed it in the ferry-boat, and trudged home to Seville, 

 where I arrived in time to dress for dinner. My landlady, 

 Juliana, had almost given me up for lost, and Sefior Vasquez, 

 my Spanish master, had afforded her very little consolation, 

 merely caramha'ing about the rashness of Britons, and the 

 ruffianlv character of the natives in the neighbourhood of 

 Seville. 



After dinner, I went, as usual, to get my coffee at the 

 casino, where my friends raised their eyebrows some inches 

 at the recital of my adventures. One of them wondered 

 why I had not told him, and he would have taken me in 

 his carriage-and-four to see the ruins of Italica. But 

 Ramon Ponce de Leon, who is a young man of some genius, 

 and of an adventurous spirit, said it was an " expedicion muy 

 graciosa (a very quaint expedition), and it was natural I 

 should wish to see the sort of life of which I had read in 

 Don Quixote and Quevedo " ; an idea which most of the 



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