But we remembered that the clerkly one had said that there was room. I suppose again my dress was the real objection.
We went back towards the village of the little Señor. On our way we again crossed the dusty road which led to La Luz. A carriage was driving along it. In the carriage were two priests. Luis said:
"There probably goes the Father Superior. Shall we ask him now?"
After a moment's hesitation we turned and strode up the hill. We had to walk fast to catch the carriage, but at last the driver, perceiving that we were following him, halted.
"No," said one of the priests, "we are not the Superior of La Luz. Indeed, at this moment he is behind you. There."
He pointed out an old man in the costume of a peasant, who, bent with age, was toiling up the hill aided by his staff. The Father Superior was still some distance away. Hastily, with a brooch, we pinned my blouse up close around my throat.
The Father Superior had the face of one designed to be an ascetic, but his expression was inscrutable. He was very suave. He felt honoured, he said, by the request of the Señors, but there was no room. Now Brother Juan had said that there was room.
Luis tried to urge the matter: he instanced our Red Cross work in Serbia. The Father Superior said it was very praiseworthy of us, but ... and bowing unfelt regrets he left us.
He found for us a woman with the usual pound's weight of keys and conducted us to two bright red houses. Both were one story in height, but one was for three months' tenancy only. We decided to take the other. It was occupied to its limits by a Spanish family, so we took but the most cursory of glances into it. Then, our business settled, we said au revoir to the little Señor, who in Spanish fashion offered us his services whenever they should be needed.
We walked down a road and, in a short while, came to the village of Alverca. This was the first typical Spanish village we had passed through. It was long, stretched on the edge between the bare mountain and the fertile valley. The houses were low, one-storied for the most part, and the dust was all-prevalent. In the dusty street boys were playing football, which in Spain seems to be a summer game. In the middle of the village was a shop, which advertised itself as a Tobacco Agency, for tobacco is a Spanish government monopoly and can be sold only in licensed places. We went in to get a drink and to ask if by chance they had some tobacco, for all the while we were in Spain there was a famine of tobacco.