ame
round, Jane knew the place quite as well as we did. My wife found in
her a true friend, for she soon took a large share of the work off
her hands, and did it with so much skill, and with so strong a wish to
please us, that we grew to love her as if she had been our own child.

When the time came for us to keep in doors from the rain, the boys would
oft lay by their work, and sit to hear Jane talk of what she had seen in
the East, and Ernest and Fritz would read to her by turns such books as
she might choose. I was glad to see that this wrought a great change in
my sons, whose mode of life had made them rough in their ways and loud
in their speech--faults which we did not think of so long as there was
no one to see or hear them.

When the spring came, the boys went in our boat to the spot where they
had found Jane, which we now knew by the name of "Jane's Isle," and
brought back some beans, which were new to them. These we found to be
COF-FEE. Jane told us that they were by no means scarce, but that she
had not made use of them, as she knew no way to roast or grind the
beans, which she found in a green state.

"Do you think," said my wife, "that the plant would grow here?"

I then thought for the first time how fond she was of it. There had been
some bags on board the ship, but I had not brought them from the wreck;
and my wife had once said that she would like to see the plant in our
ground. Now that we knew where to get it, she told me that it was one of
the few things that she felt the loss of. When the boys heard this, they
set out on a trip to Jane's Isle, and while there they went to the spot
where she had dwelt for so long, and sought for what things she had left
when she came to live with us.

All these were brought to Rock, House, and I may tell you that Fritz set
great store by them. There were all sorts of odd clothes, which she had
made of the skin of the sea calf; fish lines wrought out of the hair of
her head; pins made from the bones of fish; a lamp made out of a shell,
with a wick of the threads which she had drawn from her hose. There were
the shells she used to cook her food in; a hat made from the breast of a
large bird, the tail of which she had spread out so as to shade her neck
from the sun; belts, shoes, and odd things of a like kind.

My wife, who had now a friend of her own sex to talk with, did not feel
dull when the boys left us for a time, so they had leave to roam where
their wish l