While I and the two maids had been undergoing the dull labour mentioned in the preceding chapter, all the others had been attending to their gardens, and they all flocked to tea, laden with fruit and decorated with flowers, looking so pretty and happy that I could not but think, whatever our lot, we should retain our spirits and cheerfulness to the end. Schillie came last, dragging with her a heap of unknown lichens, creepers, and mosses, on all of which she wanted me to hold a consultation as to what they could be.

Having made some highly-satisfactory guesses, and also having discovered amongst our books one on Botany, and another on Natural History of all kinds, and also the Travels of a Gentleman in the West Indies, that gave a very accurate account of all the productions natural to the climate we were in, she was in an especial good humour.

Sybil begged earnestly that the house might be in the gothic style, which upset Schillie a little, but she pooh, poohed it off, until Serena came out with a vehement hope that it might be a Swiss cottage. "Swiss fiddlestick," retorted Schillie, "my dear girls, if you think I shall break my back and spoil my hands ornamenting a house for you, you will find yourselves wonderfully deceived." She had very pretty small white hands. Gatty thought it would be delightful to cut down a tree, and muttered something about the impossibility of learning lessons and building a house at the same time. In this she was unanimously supported by several youthful voices, and Madame was already appealing to me by looks of a most pathetic kind (she had the most extraordinary horror of a holiday that I ever saw), and Schillie, on seeing her look, exclaimed, "Well, Madame, you are certainly not of the same species as I am. I should be only too willing to give them holidays every day if I were their governess." "Yes, Madame," said Sybil, "and she acts up to it; for when you were ill, I heard her say to the little girls that she would give them a whole holiday that day because they had had only half a one the day before." Madame looked horror-stricken, and mournfully shook her head at Schillie.

Mother.—"Come, come, now, about this house. Where shall we put it up!"

Many places were suggested, and at last, partly because there were so many trees there, partly because we fancied it more sheltered, and partly because it was such a lovely spot, we fixed upon the little valley or glade which was sheltered by the cliffs on one side and by a thick wood on the other. In the centre was the great tree which had bewildered us so by its strange movements while under the influence of the great Anaconda. Inland, beyond the tree, was the pretty peaceful lake, and a sloping terrace took us down to it.

Great impatience was now manifested on all sides to begin; Madame alone was in low spirits. It had been decreed by the higher powers that, until we could see how we got on in this new and unusual work for feminine fingers, it was as well to employ the whole force of the island; besides, after being screwed up in the caverns, where lessons and Madame were met at every corner, and there was no escape, a little holiday would be a great boon. The piano had been sadly damaged by the wet, so we begged her to set it right, that it might be ready for the new drawing room.

We all drew plans of the house first, and, to the surprise of everybody, Schillie's was undoubtedly the best. So the little Mother was well bullied for being so disgusted at having to build a house, and yet taking the trouble of making such a good plan. She was made clerk of the works on the spot. Gatty's plan had consisted of merely one square. "On one side we can sleep," she said, "and on the other sit and do all we have to do." "But where are we to eat?" said Sybil. "Oh, I think nothing so stupid as having regular meals," said Gatty. "When I have a house of my own, I never intend to order anything, but I shall go to the cupboard and eat when I am hungry." "But," said Winny, "I don't see a cupboard in your plan, Gatty." "Oh, we will stick one up somewhere, little one," returned Gatty.

The high spirits with which every one began their allotted tasks rather gave way under the fatigue and hard work, so unusual to delicate fingers. Gatty had earnestly begged to cut down the tree, with Jenny, Oscar, and Schillie to help. Sybil's hands were too slight and small to hold the hatchet, so she had to collect grass and moss with the young ones. The first tree that was cut down, how often it was anathematized, it seemed determined not to come down. Hot and panting we sat down one after another to rest, and a sort of vague notion kept running in our heads, if one tree is such a trouble, what shall we do having to cut down so many. But Schillie was not to be daunted by a tree; taking a great glassful of porter, she called on us all to set to work again, partly laughing at us, partly praising us, and especially animating us by her energetic example; at length down came our first tree with a delightful crash. And happy were the boys, sitting astride on the branches, and sawing away as if they received wages for all they did. The next tree was more civil, and came down in half the time; the fact is, we grew more expert, and at last it was but one hour's task among us all to fell one. In a week we had cleared a good space, sawn and chopped a vast quantity of wood, and then the clerk of the works ordered me to get a great feast ready, as the next day she was going to lay, not the first stone, but the first tree of our house. So we went in great state to the ceremony, and we took a bottle of wine with us to drink success to the new house, and the clerk of the works made a very neat and appropriate speech, in which, however, she showed herself on rather too familiar terms with her workpeople; and I, in return, proposed, "health and long life to the clerk of the works," which was received with great cheering and applause. Madame became quite merry, and having settled the well-being of the piano, actually offered her services to assist in the building, and never mentioned lessons the whole day. We had a superb feast. A magnificent dish of fish, the last piece of beef in our possession, peas, bacon and beans, roasted yams, a glorious plum-pudding, with brandy blazing up in the middle, fruit, beautiful to behold and delicious to taste. Then, after dinner, we sang songs, and Madame told us some stories, and we went to bed extremely happy, but nearly as weary of our day's pleasure as we were of our daily work, we had laughed and talked so much. It was quite a month before the clerk of the works would allow us to consider our house fit to be looked at, and I cannot say it was ever quite finished, as we always found something to alter and arrange in it. It consisted of one hall in the middle, thirty feet long, twenty feet wide, the walls of which were composed of the trees we had cut down, a double row of them, the intermediate space being filled up with everything we could collect in the shape of grass and moss; the inside was plastered with clay, which, after a while, we painted, as we had a good store of oils and turpentine and other things, which had been designed for the ship. On both sides of the hall, we had what we called lean-tos, the roofs of which began where the roof of the hall ended, and they sloped down to within four feet of the ground. The other side, or point of the hall, was the entrance. The sheds on each side opened into the hall, but had no other outlet. There were two on each side and one at the end opposite the entrance, which was a kitchen and scullery. Of the four little side rooms, Schillie and I occupied the one on the right hand of the door, Madame and the three little girls the next one, the two maids and two boys opposite us, and the three girls opposite Madame. The little girls used our room to dress and wash in, so that Madame's was not intruded upon except at night, and she could keep it quiet for herself when she wanted to lie down and rest. The bed places were put just where the roof was lowest, so that, in fact, when lying down, our faces were within two feet of the roof, but, by this means, we had more room in which to stand upright and move about. The kitchen had an outlet at the side. The reason we made our side roofs slope down so much was to allow the rain to fall off quicker, and to let hurricanes blow over us, if possible, without finding any resisting substance the wind could blow away. Then all round our house we planted the prickly pear, which grew like a weed, so that nothing could attack our dwelling from the outside, excepting by the door, and that makes me remember to remark that we had no door at all, and we often laughed at ourselves for taking such care to guard the sides of the house when we left open the only place where there was an entrance. However, then we were under no alarm regarding thieves and robbers. But we had a sail-cloth curtain, which at night we fastened with bars of wood across, as much to prevent the wind flapping it to and fro as to hinder anything getting in; also, each bed-room had a curtain before its door or entrance. We had a great deal of trouble with the roof it must be acknowledged, even the clerk of the works stamped her foot, and went so far as to say, "Hang the roof," to which Sybil demurely replied, "That's just what we want to do."

We took three spars, one for the middle and two each side, these latter being placed two feet lower; on these we nailed a strip of sail-cloth each side, which we tarred and painted very often, especially the inside, which, at the children's request, was painted in blue, to make our roof or ceiling look pretty; above the sail-cloth outside we laid a smooth layer of leaves, and then across we nailed shingles of wood lapped one over the other, which again were seamed by cross pieces very strongly fastened. Lucky it was that the walls were so thick, otherwise such an elaborate roof could never have been supported. When finished, we all had an argument as to whether it really would resist water, and Gatty offered, with Serena to help her, to go up and empty buckets of water on it to try. This handsome offer was declined, as we thought the rain would do that soon enough, and we were at present too much in love with our work to bear the shock of finding all our labour was thrown away. I am afraid of appearing tedious in describing our many mistakes, our frequent mishaps, and the many blundering contrivances we had. Certain it is that to the clerk of the works we owed most of our neatness, to the quick wits of the girls many of our ideas, and one and all worked with a will. Nevertheless, I have no doubt that the commonest carpenter in the smallest village would have laughed at the house we built, and how we rectified gaps with grass and moss, how things warped one way and others shrunk the contrary, how nails stuck out their points and their heads were utterly lost, how screws were such a time before they would ever screw for us, how, animated by the clerk of the works, few thought of chopped fingers and hammered hands, how others ceased to shriek at the monstrous spiders, centipedes, lizards and small snakes, appearing every minute in the grass and moss; and now one and all agreed, that, in spite of every impediment, we should have the housewarming dinner and the first usage of our new mansion on the first Christmas-day we had ever spent on this unknown but lonely island.