activity with which we attacked our domestic business at
Elche lasted about two days and a half,--Dawson labouring at his shed, I
at the cultivation of the garden, and Moll quitting her cooking and
household affairs, as occasion permitted, to lend a helping hand first
to her father and then to me. And as man, when this fever of enterprise
is upon him, must for ever be seeking to add to his cares, we persuaded
Don Sanchez to let us have two she-goats to stall in the shed and
consume our waste herbage, that we might have milk and get butter, which
they do in these parts by shaking the cream in a skin bag (a method that
seems simple enough till you have been shaking the bag for twenty
minutes in vain on a sultry morning) without cost. But the novelty of
the thing wearing off, our eagerness rapidly subsided, and so about the
third day (as I say), the heat being prodigious, we toiled with no
spirit at all.

Dawson was the first to speak his mind. Says he, coming to me whilst I
was still sweating over my shovel:

"I've done it, but hang me if I do more. There's a good piece of work
worth thirty shillings of any man's money, but who'll give me a thank ye
for it when we leave here next year?"

And then he can find nothing better to do than fall a-commenting on my
labours, saying there was but precious little to show for my efforts,
that had he been in my place he would have ordered matters otherwise,
and begun digging t'other end, wagering that I should give up my job
before it was quarter done, etc., all which was mighty discouraging and
the more unpleasant because I felt there was a good deal of truth in
what he said.

Consequently, I felt a certain malicious enjoyment the next morning upon
finding that the goats had burst out one side of his famous shed, and
got loose into the garden, which enabled me to wonder that two such
feeble creatures could undo such a good thirty shillings' worth of work,
etc. But ere I was done galling him, I myself was mortified exceedingly
to find these mischievous brutes had torn up all the plants I had set by
the trees in the shade as worthy of cultivation, which gave Jack a
chance for jibing at me. But that which embittered us as much as
anything was to have Moll holding her sides for laughter at our attempts
to catch these two devilish goats, which to our cost we found were not
so feeble, after all; for getting one up in a corner, she raises herself
up on her hind legs and brings her skull