The Caper of the Golden Bulls

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On pleasant mornings Peter Churchman enjoyed swimming in the piscina at the foot of his garden. It was a charming little pool, enclosed by oleanders and a bathhouse crimson with bougainvillaea, but it had been constructed, oddly enough, without a drain; when it was necessary to change the water, Peter’s maids, and some of their friends from nearby villas, kicked off their alpargatas, put on old uniforms, jumped into the pool, and emptied it with buckets.

It was tedious work, but the girls made a holiday of it, splashing about the pool as busily as wrens in a bird bath; and when they were finished they scrubbed the sides and bottom clean with coarse tufts of esparto grass which they twisted from the slopes of the mountain behind the villa.

After all this it took the pool three days to fill. Once upon a time Peter had found this mildly annoying, but that was before his conversion to the philosophical view; after that significant event he had come easily and naturally to the conclusion that a temporarily inoperative swimming pool was a light cross indeed to carry through life.

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