making herself understood, together with an excellent memory and a natural aptitude, she learned to speak the Moorish tongue in a marvellously short space of time.  Dawson and I were frequently asked to accompany Moll, and we went twice to this house, which, though nothing at all to look at outside, was very magnificently furnished within, and the entertainment most noble.  But Lord! ’twas the most tedious, wearisome business for us, who could make out never a word of the civil speeches offered us without the aid of Don Sanchez and Moll, and then could think of no witty response, but could only sit there grinning like Gog and Magog.  Still, it gave us vast pleasure to see how Moll carried herself with this company, talking as freely as they, yet holding herself with the dignity of an equal, and delighting all by her vivacity and sly, pretty ways.

[Illustration:  “SHE PRACTISED DAY AFTER DAY BY CARRYING A PITCHER OF WATER ON HER HEAD.”]

I think no country in Europe can be richer than this Elche in fruits and vegetation, more beautiful in its surrounding aspects of plain and mountain, more blessed with constant, glorious sunlight; and the effect of these charms upon the quick, receptive spirit of our Molly was like a gentle May upon a nightingale, so that the days were all too short for her enjoyment, and she must need vent her happiness in song; but on us they made no more impression than on two owls in a tower, nay, if anything they did add to that weariness which arose from our lack of occupation.  For here was no contrast in our lives, one day being as like another as two peas in a pod, and having no sort of adversities to give savour to our ease, we found existence the most flat, insipid, dull thing possible.  I remember how, on Christmas day, Dawson did cry out against the warm sunshine as a thing contrary to nature, wishing he might stand up to his knees in snow in a whistling wind, and taking up the crock Moll had filled with roses (which here bloom more fully in the depth of winter than with us in the height of summer), he flung it out of the door with a curse for an unchristian thing to have in the house on such a day.

As soon as the year had turned, we began to count the days to our departure, and thenceforth we could think of nought but what we would do with our fortune when we got it; and, the evenings being long, we would set the bag of wine betwixt us after our supper of dates, and sit there for hours discussing our several projects.  Moll being with us (for in these parts no womankind may be abroad after sundown), she would take part in these debates with as much gusto as we.  For though she was not wearied of her life here as we were, yet she was possessed of a very stirring spirit of adventure, and her quick imagination furnished endless visions of lively pleasures and sumptuous living.  We agreed that we would live together, and share everything in common as one family, but not in such an outlandish