The Don inclined his head, but lingered, talking to Moll very gravely, and yet tenderly, for some while, Dawson and I going into the house to see what we could make of it; and then, telling us we should see him no more till the next day, he left us.  But for some time after he was gone Moll sat on the side of the well, very pensive and wistful, as one to whom the future was opened for the first time.

Anon comes a banging at our garden gate, which Moll had closed behind the Don; and, going to it, we find a Moorish boy with a barrow charged with many things.  We could not understand a word he said, but Dawson decided these chattels were sent us by the Don, by perceiving a huge hogskin of wine, for which he thanked God and Don Sanchez an hundred times over.  So these commodities we carried up to the house, marvelling greatly at the Don’s forethought and generosity, for here were a score of things over and above those we had already found ourselves lacking; namely, earthen pipkins and wooden vessels, a bag of charcoal, a box of carpenters’ tools (which did greatly like Dawson, he having been bred a carpenter in his youth), instruments for gardening (to my pleasure, as I have ever had a taste for such employment), some very fine Moorish blankets, etc.  So when the barrow was discharged, Dawson gives the lad some rials out of his pocket, which pleased him also mightily.

Then, first of all, Dawson unties the leg of the hogskin, and draws off a quart of wine, very carefully securing the leg after, and this we drank to our great refreshment; and next Moll, being awoke from her dreams and eager to be doing, sets herself to sort out our goods, such as belong to us (as tools, etc.), on one side, and such as belong to her (as pipkins and the rest) on the other.  Leaving her to this employment, Dawson and I, armed with a knife and bagging hook, betake ourselves to a great store of canes stacked in one corner of the garden, and sorting out those most proper to our purpose, we lopped them all of an equal length, and shouldering as many as we could carried them up to our house.  Here we found Moll mighty jubilant in having got her work done, and admirably she had done it, to be sure.  For, having found a long recess in the wall, she had brushed it out clean with a whisp of herbs, and stored up her crocks according to their size, very artificial, with a dish of oranges plucked from the tree at our door on one side, and a dish of almonds on the other, a pipkin standing betwixt ’em with a handsome posey of roses in it.  She had spread a mat on the floor, and folded up our fine blankets to serve for cushions; and all that did not belong to her she had bundled out of sight into that hollowed side I have mentioned as being intended for cattle.

After we had sufficiently admired the performance, she told us she had a mind to give us a supper of broth.  “But,” says she, “the Don has forgotten that we must eat, and hath sent us neither bread nor flesh nor salt.”