but there was no sound, and, satisfied,
she retired to her high couch and closed the gayly flowered curtains
around her. But, out on the small balcony which hung like a cage from
his eastern window, Doro stood, leaning over the iron railing and
listening, listening to the far sound of the sea.

Such had been the life down in the old house for sixteen long,
winterless years, the only changes being more difficult music and more
toast, longer lessons in French, longer legs to the little blue
trousers, increased attention to sea-baths and deportment, and always
and ever a careful saving of every copper penny and battered shilling.
What became of these coins old Viny did not know; she only knew how
patiently they were collected, and how scrupulously saved. Miss
Elisabetha attended to the orange-grove in person; not one orange was
lost, and the annual waste of the other proprietors, an ancient and
matter-of-course waste, handed down from father to son, represented in
her purse not a few silver pieces. Pedro, the Minorcan, who brought her
fish and sea-food, she had drilled from boyhood in his own art by sheer
force of will, paying him by the day, and sending him into the town to
sell from door to door all she did not need herself, to the very last
clam. The lazy housewives soon grew into the habit of expecting Pedro
and his basket, and stood in their doorways chatting in the sun and
waiting for him, while the husbands let their black dugouts lie idle,
and lounged on the sea-wall, smoking and discussing the last alligator
they had shot, or the last ship, a coasting-schooner out of water, which
had sailed up their crooked harbor six months before. Miss Elisabetha
had learned also to braid palmetto, and her long fingers, once
accustomed to the work, accomplished as much in a week as Zanita Perez
and both her apprentices accomplished in two; she brought to the task
also original ideas, original at least in Beata, where the rude hats and
baskets were fac-similes of those braided there two hundred years before
by the Spanish women, who had learned the art from the Indians. Thus
Miss Elisabetha's wares found ready sale at increased prices, little
enough to Northern ideas--sixpence for a hat--one shilling for a basket;
but all down the coast, and inland toward the great river, there was a
demand for her work, and the lines hung in the garden were almost
constantly covered with the drying palmetto. Then she taught music. To
whom, do y