Besides The Couches, The Furniture Consisted Of Three Or Four Sailor
Chests; In Which Were Stored The Fine Wearing-Apparel
Of the
household - the ruffled linen shirts of Po-Po, the calico dresses of
his wife and children, and divers
Odds and ends of European
articles - strings of beads, ribbons, Dutch looking-glasses, knives,
coarse prints, bunches of keys, bits of crockery, and metal buttons.
One of these chests - used as a bandbox by Arfretee - contained
several of the native hats (coal-scuttles), all of the same pattern,
but trimmed with variously-coloured ribbons. Of nothing was our good
hostess more proud than of these hats, and her dresses. On Sundays,
she went abroad a dozen times; and every time, like Queen Elizabeth,
in a different robe.
Po-Po, for some reason or other, always gave us our meals before the
rest of the family were served; and the doctor, who was very
discerning in such matters, declared that we fared much better than
they. Certain it was that, had Ereemear's guests travelled with
purses, portmanteau, and letters of introduction to the queen, they
could not have been better cared for.
The day after our arrival, Monee, the old butler, brought us in for
dinner a small pig, baked in the ground. All savoury, it lay in a
wooden trencher, surrounded by roasted hemispheres of the breadfruit.
A large calabash, filled with taro pudding, or poee, followed; and
the young dandy, overcoming his customary languor, threw down our
cocoa-nuts from an adjoining tree.
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