In this sordid spot was condemned to remain for certain hours
the impotent transport of the Queen of the Serpent Tribe.
The front door of the car was open. Its forward end was
curtained off into a small reception-room. Here the admiring and
propitiatory reporters were wont to sit and transpose the music of
Senorita Alvarita's talk into the more florid key of the press. A
picture of Abraham Lincoln hung against a wall; one of a cluster of
school-girls grouped upon stone steps was in another place; a third
was Easter lilies in a blood-red frame. A neat carpet was under
foot. A pitcher, sweating cold drops, and a glass stood on a
fragile stand. In a willow rocker, reading a newspaper, sat
Alvarita.
Spanish, you would say; Andalusian, or, better still, Basque;
that compound, like
