For Jacinta by Harold Bindloss

It was in the heat of the afternoon Mrs. Hatherly and Muriel drove into old-world Laguna, which stands high upon the hill slopes above Santa Cruz. It was built four hundred years ago, and remains but little changed, for its early prosperity ebbed away with the trade in the once famous vintages of Canary, so that it stood until a few years ago with the grass in its streets, a place of drowsy stillness, picturesque in its decay, cool, and by no means over clean. Beneath it the hillside drops, dusty and sun-scorched, to the sea; but on the plateau behind it are fields of tall sugar-cane, walnuts, eucalyptus, and vines, beyond which again the shoulders of the great peak are seamed by straggling pines.

Still, when Mrs. Hatherly drove into it, Laguna was once more awakening, for the British tourist had arrived, with his wife and daughters, in blue veils and inartistic raiment that roused the peasants' wonder, besides cameras, and baggage by the carriage load; and when the tourist comes, quietness and the dignified simplicity of olden Spain melt before him.