Justin kept his word with Judith and labored with the loom, putting it together and taking it to pieces, doing and undoing his work, hammering and tinkering at it all day long—when he had nothing better to do—for, in fact, the experiment of loom building was not sufficiently full of promise of success to justify the wasting upon it time that might be more profitably employed.
In the evening he joined Britomarte in the parlor, and read aloud, while she sewed and Judith knitted.
Thus passed their indoor life during the wet season.
CHAPTER XXX.
THE OLD FAMILIAR FLAG.
When spring and sunshine came again, Justin began to lay out new garden beds and to put in the seeds for early vegetables.
And Judith, to her heart’s delight, began what she called her “spring claning.” But first of all, as their boxes of hard brown soap had nearly given out, Judith showed her skill in the manufacture of soft soap from lye made of wood ashes, and grease melted from kitchen fat.
When she had succeeded in this, she commenced her “claning.” Every housekeeper knows what that process is in the hands of a skillful woman; so it is enough to say that Judith accomplished the task in the best possible manner; and that at the end of a week’s work, the house and all within and around it was as clean and neat as human skill and human hands could make it. White curtains replaced the red ones at all the windows; and the winter carpets were stowed away and the floors were covered with the matting that Justin had manufactured from the long fibres of the palm leaves during the winter months.
While Judith had been engaged in the housecleaning Britomarte had employed herself in laying out the front yard in parterres and planting them with flower seeds.
And Justin, in the intervals of his field and garden work, built a neat cover over a clear spring at a short distance from the house; he built it of stone for coolness, and dug a channel for the spring to flow through, and paved and cemented it, so that the pans of milk and cream and pots of butter could be set in the running water. Adjoining the dairy was a temporary shed, where the cow could be driven to be fed and milked in bad weather.
“Sure, it’s all beautiful entirely; and I wish Crummie could go on giving millik foriver, so I do! But that can’t be expicted, and sure she must go dhry some day, and thin whativer shall we do? Och-hone!” cried Judith, as she contemplated her new dairy, and felt herself divided between delight in its acquisition and dread of the calamity she had foreshadowed.