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handmade shoes and they spent more time on the Alcala until suddenly they realised that it was six o’clock. The coffee houses and pastry-shops were now full of women chattering over their merienda, but Teresa seemed disinclined to stop even for a quick glass of chocolate and a cake.
    ‘We will call on the Vegas early,’ she suggested, a flush of excitement staining her cheeks, ‘and then we can make our excuses. I want to take you tascas-hopping. It’s lots of fun and something you really ought to do before we leave Madrid.’
    ‘What will the Marquesa say?’ Catherine asked diffidently. ‘Or Don Jaime?’
    ‘Oh, Cathy!’ Teresa protested. ‘How will they know? We will be home before midnight if we go early enough, but you really must see our busy mesones. They are a kind of tavern—terribly respectable, you understand—and most of them are in the old part of the city which is the real Madrid.’
    Catherine hesitated.
    ‘If you’re quite sure,’ she said doubtfully. ‘I feel that I’m more or less in charge at the moment.’
    ‘As if you could be when you know so little of Madrid!’ Teresa laughed. ‘You will be glad to get away from the Vegas, I assure you!’
    They took a taxi to a rather drab-looking edifice in a side-street leading off the Calle de Segovia which was the home of the Vegas, where they were entertained by an elderly lady and her two nephews, whom Teresa obviously disliked. Catherine thought them pleasant enough, but dull, and was almost glad when Teresa rose to go. She made her pretty excuses to the se n ora, dismissed the two polite young men with a brief smile, and shepherded Catherine out on to the pavement in the shortest possible time. They heard a clock strike nine as they walked briskly in the direction of the Plaza Mayor.
    ‘You needn’t look so worried,’ Teresa assured her. ‘Nothing is going to happen to us. You are a good duena, are you not?’
    ‘I’m out of my depth,’ Catherine admitted. ‘Teresa, I think we should go back.’ She looked about her at the maze of narrow, cobbled streets with their closely-shuttered windows and barricaded shops. ‘We can come some other time—with Don Jaime, perhaps.’
    ‘He would not come here, unless on a very special occasion,’ Teresa said, ‘but he would not object to you seeing the real Madrid, especially when we are so soon to go away.’
    It seemed a reasonable enough argument, and Catherine followed her across the wide plaza to an archway and down a flight of stone steps to where a dozen small taverns spilled their light and gaiety on to the adjacent pavements. Most of them were already full of people searching for a table, but Teresa seemed to know her way about. She selected the nearest side cafe where she ordered shrimps, mushrooms and tortilla, together with two glasses of carta blanca which they drank standing at the counter.
    ‘We haven’t time for any more tascas ,’ she decided when they had finished. ‘It’s rather a pity because you can spend a whole evening just hopping from one cafe to another and eating as much as you like.’ She turned along a darkened side-street where a mellow glow led them to the window of a secluded restaurant.
    ‘You’ll love this,’ she said, plunging in at the door.
    It was at this point that Catherine had the strongest misgivings. But the restaurant looked eminently respectable, a tall, narrow house of many floors reached by a single staircase on which departing and arriving guests seemed to be inextricably mixed. Groups of tourists rubbed shoulders with the local Ma drilenos, laughing and talking as they filed between the crowded tables, determined to make this an evening to be remembered, and Teresa nodded to several acquaintances as they passed.
    Finally they were installed at a small table for two in a corner. Teresa’s eyes were alight with a new intensity as she gazed about her and an American lady at the next table said in a loud voice: ‘My, but she sure is