Page:C N and A M Williamson - The Lightning Conductor.djvu/171

 on the other side I burst out laughing at a sign, in what was meant to be English, advertising the castle for sale. Capitals were sprinkled about everywhere; the painter had thought they would look pretty, and evidently it was held out as a lure to Britishers and Americans that Charles the Fifth had built it and lived in it. I know Mrs. Washington Potts would love to buy it, and then go home and mention in an absent-minded manner that she'd "acquired a royal palace in Spain as a winter residence." Can't you hear her? But oh, poor palace! It's as airy a mansion now as most castles in Spain, though what's left of its walls is about fifteen feet thick. Still, the glorious view of sea and mountains from the roof would be worth paying for, and wouldn't need thousands of dollars' worth of restoration, like the house.

While we lingered in Fuenterrabia absorbing the atmosphere of old Spain, the time was inconsiderate enough to run away and leave us with only a twisted channel among sandbanks to remember it by. So we took an oddly shaped carriage with a white tasselled awning on it and drove back to Hendaye and our motor-car. But the day was a great success, and I congratulated Brown, which Aunt Mary said it was silly to do, as it is his business to think of everything for us.

Now, as you see by the date of my letter, we're at Pau, to which we came from Biarritz in a delicious morning's run through a pearl- coloured landscape trimmed with blue mountains. As we got into the town the Lightning Conductor, who was driving,