When they first arrived they stayed at a large hotel in the Puerta del Sol, but Mrs. Gainsborough got into trouble with the baths, partly because they cost five pesetas each and partly because she said it went to her heart to see a perfectly clean sheet floating about in the water. After that they tried a smaller hotel, where they were fairly comfortable, though Mrs. Gainsborough took a long time to get used to being brought chocolate in the morning. "I miss my morning tea, Sylvia, and it's no use me pretending I don't. I don't feel like chocolate in the morning. I'd just as lieve have a slice of plum-pudding in a cup. Why, if you try to put a lump of sugar in, it won't sink; it keeps bobbing up like a kitten. And another thing I can't seem to get used to is having the fish after the meat. Every time it comes in like that it seems a kind of carelessness. What fish it is, too, when it does come. Well, they say a donkey can eat thistles, but it would take him all his time to get through one of those fish. No wonder they serve them after the meat. I should think they were afraid of the amount of meat any one might eat, trying to get the bones out of one's throat. I've felt like a pincushion ever since I got to Madrid, and how you can sing beats me. Your throat must be like a zither by now." It really did not seem worth while to remain any longer in Madrid, and Sylvia asked to be released from her contract. The manager, who had been wondering to all the other girls why Sylvia had ever been sent to him, discovered that she was his chief attraction when she wanted to break the contract. However, a hundred pesetas in his own pocket removed all objections, and she was free to leave Spain. "Well, do you want to go home?" she asked Mrs. Gainsborough. "Or would you come to Seville?" "Now we've come so far, we may as well go on a bit farther," Mrs. Gainsborough thought. Seville was very different from Madrid. "Really, when you see oranges growing in the streets," Mrs. Gainsborough said, "you begin to understand why people ever goes abroad. Why, the flowers are really grand, Sylvia. Carnations as common as daisies. Well, I declare, I wrote home a post-card to Mrs. Beardmore and told her Seville was like being in a conservatory. She's living near Kew now, so she'll understand my meaning." They both much enjoyed the dancing in the cafés, when solemn men hurled their sombreros on the dancers' platform to mark their appreciation of the superb creatures who flaunted themselves there so gracefully. "But they're bold hussies with it all, aren't they?" Mrs. Gainsborough observed. "Upon me word, I wouldn't care to climb up there and swing my hips about like that." From Seville, after an idle month of exquisite weather, often so warm that Sylvia could sit in the garden of the Alcazar and read in the shade of the lemon-trees, they went to Granada.