oquet, green as an emerald, descended from the
neighbouring fan-palms, the partridge ran along the grass; all advanced
promiscuously towards her, like a brood of chickens: and she and Paul
found an exhaustless source of amusement in observing their sports,
their repasts, and their loves.

Amiable children! thus passed your earlier days in innocence, and in
obeying the impulses of kindness. How many times, on this very spot,
have your mothers, pressing you in their arms, blessed Heaven for the
consolation your unfolding virtues prepared for their declining years,
while they at the same time enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing you begin
life under the happiest auspices! How many times, beneath the shade
of those rocks, have I partaken with them of your rural repasts, which
never cost any animal its life! Gourds full of milk, fresh eggs, cakes
of rice served up on plantain leaves, with baskets of mangoes, oranges,
dates, pomegranates, pineapples, furnished a wholesome repast, the
most agreeable to the eye, as well as delicious to the taste, that can
possibly be imagined.

Like the repast, the conversation was mild, and free from every thing
having a tendency to do harm. Paul often talked of the labours of the
day and of the morrow. He was continually planning something for the
accommodation of their little society. Here he discovered that the paths
were rugged; there, that the seats were uncomfortable: sometimes the
young arbours did not afford sufficient shade, and Virginia might be
better pleased elsewhere.

During the rainy season the two families met together in the cottage,
and employed themselves in weaving mats of grass, and baskets of bamboo.
Rakes, spades, and hatchets, were ranged along the walls in the most
perfect order; and near these instruments of agriculture were heaped its
products,--bags of rice, sheaves of corn, and baskets of plantains. Some
degree of luxury usually accompanies abundance; and Virginia was taught
by her mother and Margaret to prepare sherbert and cordials from the
juice of the sugar-cane, the lemon and the citron.

When night came, they all supped together by the light of a lamp; after
which Madame de la Tour or Margaret related some story of travellers
benighted in those woods of Europe that are still infested by banditti;
or told a dismal tale of some shipwrecked vessel, thrown by the tempest
upon the rocks of a desert island. To these recitals the children
listened with eager atten