The doctor was provided
for in another corner.
Loo reposed alone on a little settee with a taper burning by her side;
the dandy, her brother, swinging overhead in a sailor's hammock The
two gazelles frisked upon a mat near by; and the indigent relations
borrowed a scant corner of the old butler's pallet, who snored away
by the open door. After all had retired, Po-Po placed the illuminated
melon in the middle of the apartment; and so, we all slumbered till
morning.
Upon awaking, the sun was streaming brightly through the open bamboos,
but no one was stirring. 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.
