This put us to a stumble, for how to get these things we knew not; but Moll declared she would get all she needed if we could only find the money.

“Why, how?” asks Jack.  “You know not their gibberish.”

“That may be,” answers she, “but I warrant the same language that bought me this petticoat will get us a supper.”

So we gave her what money we had, and she went off a-marketing, with as much confidence as if she were a born Barbary Moor.  Then Jack falls to thanking God for blessing him with such a daughter, at the same time taking no small credit to himself for having bred her to such perfection, and in the midst of his encomiums, being down in the hollow searching for his hammer, he cries: 

“Plague take the careless baggage! she has spilled all our nails, and here’s an hour’s work to pick ’em up!”

This accident was repaired, however, and Moll’s transgression forgotten when she returned with an old woman carrying her purchases.  Then were we forced to admire her skill in this business, for she had bought all that was needful for a couple of meals, and yet had spent but half our money.  Now arose the difficult question how to make a fire, and this Jack left us to settle by our own devices, he returning to his own occupation.  Moll resolved we should do our cooking outside the house, so here we built up a kind of grate with stones; and, contriving to strike a spark with the back of a jack-knife and a stone, upon a heap of dried leaves, we presently blew up a fine flame, and feeding this with the ends of cane we had cut and some charcoal, we at last got a royal fire on which to set our pot of mutton.  And into this pot we put rice and a multitude of herbs from the garden, which by the taste we thought might serve to make a savoury mess.  And, indeed, when it began to boil, the odour was so agreeable that we would have Jack come out to smell it.  And he having praised it very highly, we in return went in to look at his handiwork and praise that.  This we could do very heartily and without hypocrisy, for he had worked well and made a rare good job, having built a very seemly partition across the room, by nailing of the canes perpendicularly to that kind of floor that hung over the hollowed portion, thus making us now three rooms out of one.  At one end he had left an opening to enter the cavity below and the floor above by the little ladder that stood there, and these canes were set not so close together but that air and light could pass betwixt them, and yet from the outer side no eye could see within, which was very commodious.  Also upon the floor above, he had found sundry bundles of soft dried leaves, and these, opened out upon the surface of both chambers, made a very sweet, convenient bed upon which to lie.  Then Dawson offering Moll her choice, she took the upper floor for her chamber, leaving us two the lower; and so, it being near sundown by this time, we to our supper in the sweet, cool air of evening, all mightily