At the back of the yard there was a small storehouse, or pantry, built to keep a limited supply of provisions—the great bulk of their provisions being still kept in the mountain grottoes, where they could best be preserved.
A few tropical vines had been transplanted from the thicket at the base of the mountain to the soil in front of the house, and had readily taken root, and were now trained up to festoon and shade the windows and doors.
At the end of the first autumn month all was ready.
It was on a certain Wednesday afternoon that our friends first took possession of their new home.
Justin, having seen the women established, went to his outdoor work, which was just now the transplanting of some young fruit trees that he had raised in a nursery from the seeds, and that now needed to be set out.
Britomarte took her needlework—some shirts that she was neatly repairing for Justin—and seated herself beside the front window of her bedchamber, looking out to the western sea, and across toward her own native land.
It was a novelty and a delight—perhaps the greatest novelty and the greatest delight of the whole change—to be able to sit sewing at an open window, and looking out upon the land, sea and sky.
Heretofore, since she had been on the island, she had not been able to do so.
Her grotto had been a beautiful place—a wood-nymph’s bower, a fairy queen’s palace; but it had no windows, and its lofty skylight, though it illuminated the whole place, afforded no outlook whatever, and gave but a limited glimpse of the sky. When she had sat there and sewed her vision had been bounded by the walls of solid rock, which had given a prison aspect to her dwelling place.
Now all this was changed.