The barn was not a nice place to be ill in, nor was Liza, the darkey, a nurse any invalid would willingly choose, and during a sharp attack of influenza I had while we were there, I wondered sometimes if she worked evil charms over the poultices, before she brought them to me, with such an angry face. To be ill at all was, I think, in her opinion a piece of fine ladyism, to which I had no right whatever. Fortunately I did not depend upon her nursing, but had my three tenderhearted, helpful menfolk. I lay very ill indeed, the influenza bringing on a bad attack of congestion of the lungs, which nearly killed me, and of course in addition to the illness, there was the hopeless discomfort of the surroundings, the heat and dust, and when I was at my worst, a spell of desert wind, and oh! the horror of it all. The barn seemed no protection whatsoever. It was swept through and through by that parched, scorching air, like a draught from a red-hot furnace. The cracking and groaning of every wooden thing was like the wrenching and straining of a ship in a storm; the barn and everything inside the barn protested loudly. Fortunately our furniture was not to be housed for long in a building one plank thick, or there would have been but very little use in bringing it so far; soon it would have been lying about us, in disconnected bits, all sprang apart during desert wind spells.
Once we were in the house, by shutting all doors and windows we could keep the fiend out, sufficiently at least to prevent mischief; though no one can boast of much comfort till our blessed friend the sea breeze returns to us.
However, notwithstanding the desert wind, Liza’s illwill, and the influenza, I recovered a little strength and crept out again before long to see how the house was progressing.
I found the plasterers and brickbuilders hard at work, and their different encampments added to the rest. Each man brought at least one horse, often two, with his “rig,” and a dog and a gun. The horses were tethered all about the land, and we seemed more “Buffalo Bill” like than ever.
The building of the house went forward splendidly, and it promised to be both very pretty and very convenient.
(To be continued.)
[THINGS IN SEASON, IN MARKET AND KITCHEN.]
MARCH.
By LA MÉNAGÈRE.