Page:Vailima Letters - Stevenson, Colvin - 1894.djvu/41

making a duck-house; she let him be; the duck- house fell down, and she had to set her hand to it. He was then to make a drinking-place for the pigs ; she let him be again — he made a stair by which the pigs will probably escape this evening, and she was near weeping. Impossible to blame the indefatigable fellow; energy is too rare and goodwill too noble a thing to discourage; but it's trying when she wants a rest. Then she had to cook the dinner; then, of course — like a fool and a woman — must wait dinner for me, and make a flurry of herself. Her day so far. Cetera adhuc desunt.

I have been too tired to add to this chronicle, which will at any rate give you some guess of our employment. All goes well; the kuikui — (think of this mispronunciation having actually infected me to the extent of misspelling! tuitui is the word by rights) — the tuitui is all out of the paddock — a fenced park between the house and boundary; Peni's men start to-day on the road; the garden is part burned, part dug; and Henry, at the head of a troop of underpaid assistants, is hard at work clearing. The part clearing you will see from the map; from the house run down to the stream side, up the stream nearly as high as the garden; then back to the star which I have just added to the map.

My long, silent contests in the forest have had a