After surveying the fine attitudes into which forgetfulness had thrown at least one of the sleepers, my attention was called off to the general aspect of the dwelling, which was quite significant of the superior circumstances of our host.
The house itself was built in the simple, but tasteful native style.
It was a long, regular oval, some fifty feet in length, with low sides of cane-work, and a roof thatched with palmetto-leaves.

The ridgepole was, perhaps, twenty feet from the ground.

There was no foundation whatever; the bare earth being merely covered with ferns; a kind of carpeting which serves very well, if frequently renewed; otherwise, it becomes dusty, and the haunt of vermin, as in the huts of the poorer natives.
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.