d do perceive you eat less and less. Tell us what ails
you."

"Well, dear," says she, "I do believe 'tis idleness is the root of my
disorder."

"Idleness was never wont to have this effect on you."

"But it does now that I am grown older. There's not enough to do. If I
could find some occupation for my thoughts, I should not be so silly."

"Why, that's a good thought. What say you, dear, shall we go
a-play-acting again?"

Moll shook her head.

"To be sure," says he, scratching his jaw, "we come out of that business
with no great encouragement to go further in it. But times are mended
since then, and I do hear the world is more mad for diversion now than
ever they were before the Plague."

"No, dear," says Moll, "'tis of no use to think of that I couldn't play
now."

After this we sat silent awhile, looking into the embers; then Jack,
first to give expression to his thoughts, says:

"I think you were never so happy in your life, Moll, as that time we
were in Spain, nor can I recollect ever feeling so free from care
myself,--after we got out of the hands of that gentleman robber. There's
a sort of infectious brightness in the sun, and the winds, blow which
way they may, do chase away dull thoughts and dispose one to jollity;
eh, sweetheart? Why, we met never a tattered vagabond on the road but he
was halloing of ditties, and a kinder, more hospitable set of people
never lived. With a couple of rials in your pocket, you feel as rich and
independent as with an hundred pounds in your hand elsewhere."

At this point Moll, who had hitherto listened in apathy to these
eulogies, suddenly pushing back her chair, looks at us with a strange
look in her eyes, and says under her breath, "Elche!"

"Barcelony for my money," responds Dawson, whose memories of Elche were
not so cheerful as of those parts where we had led a more vagabond life.

"Elche!" repeats Moll, twining her fingers, and with a smile gleaming in
her eyes.

"Does it please you, chuck, to talk of these matters?"

"Yes, yes!" returns she, eagerly. "You know not the joy it gives me"
(clapping her hand on her heart). "Talk on."

Mightily pleased with himself, her father goes over our past
adventures,--the tricks Moll played us, as buying of her petticoat while
we were hunting for her, our excellent entertainment in the mountain
villages, our lying abed all one day, and waking at sundown to think it
was daybreak, our lazy days and jovial nights, etc., at