The alpagata is also a cheap form of footwear. Those which we were wearing cost three pesetas, say 2_s._ 9_d._ They should last two months. We were therefore spending 1_s._ 4-1/2_d._ a month each on shoes. A little arithmetic will show this as 16_s._ 6_d._ a year. To-day boots alone cost more than this in repairs, not counting the first cost. For children, of course, they are unrivalled, as the life of the alpagata almost fits the growth of the infant, which is spared the torture one remembers in childhood of boots which were too good to throw away and yet too small to wear with ease. But to taste the full romantic flavour of the alpagata, it should have been bought in the true alpagata shop. If you are in Spain don't go to the boot-shop. It does sell alpagatas, but it ought not to do so. In Spain the boot-seller should be classed with the jeweller. He sells ornaments. The boot merchant who sells alpagatas in Spain is as bad as the jeweller here who sells umbrellas. Go to the shop which sells things for the road, for that picturesque, coloured, moving life of Spain. The doorway of this fascinating shop is piled up with bales of a rough cloth of an exquisite hyacinthine blue, or of a strange yellow, which is seen to perfection only in the alpagata shop or in El Greco's pictures. This cloth is used for lining horse-collars and saddles. Above these beautiful bales are collars of white leather, heavy with small cone-shaped bells of copper, for the goats, larger collars of brown leather, either with small bells in rows, like a lady's pearl collar, or with one large bell pendant, for the oxen. Within are large coronet-shaped semicircles of leather and coloured woolwork, red, yellow, black, white, for the oxen's foreheads, long ribbons of coloured woolwork for the donkeys' harness, and fringes of brightly coloured wool netting, ending in tassels, like that which decorated the under edge of our grandmothers' sofas, to hang across the donkey's chest or down his nose. Muzzles for goats and for donkeys are here too. There is harness also in the shop, Gargantuan-looking harness studded with nails, so broad in its facets of leather that when the horse has his face inside it he looks not unlike an ancient knight in his armour. Only his eyes and his mouth are visible, and often indeed not the latter, for it may be guarded by a piece of leather work not unlike the tongue of a brogue shoe.