Chapter 15

"I beg, good Heaven, with just desires,
What need, not luxury, requires;
Give me, with sparing hands, but moderate wealth,
A little honour, and enough of health;
Free from the busy city life,
Near shady groves and purling streams confined,
A faithful friend, a pleasing wife;
And give me all in one, give a contented mind."

Anonymous.

Mark and Bridget remained at the Reef a week, entirely alone. To them
the time seemed but a single day; and so completely were they engrossed
with each other, and their present happiness, that they almost dreaded
the hour of return. Everything was visited, however, even to the
abandoned anchor, and Mark made a trip to the eastward, carrying his
wife out into the open water, in that direction. But the ship and the
crater gave Bridget the greatest happiness. Of these she never tired,
though the first gave her the most pleasure. A ship was associated with
all her earliest impressions of Mark; on board that very ship she had
been married; and now it formed her home, temporarily, if not
permanently. Bridget had been living so long beneath a tent, and in
savage huts, that the accommodations of the Rancocus appeared like those
of a palace. They were not inelegant even, though it was not usual, in
that period of the republic, to fit up vessels with a magnificence
little short of royal yachts, as is done at present. In the way of
convenience, however, our ship could boast of a great deal. Her cabins
were on deck, or under a poop, and consequently enjoyed every advantage
of light and air. Beneath were store-rooms, still well supplied with
many articles of luxury, though time was beginning to make its usual
inroads on their qualities. The bread was not quite as sound as it was
once, nor did the teas retain all their strength and flavour. But the
sugar was just as sweet as the day it was shipped, and in the coffee
there was no apparent change. Of the butter, we do not choose to say
anything. Bridget, in the prettiest manner imaginable, declared that as
soon as she could set Dido at work the store-rooms should be closely
examined, and thoroughly cleaned. Then the galley made such a convenient
and airy kitchen! Mark had removed the house, the awning answering every
purpose, and his wife declared that it was a pleasure to cook a meal for
him, in so pleasant a place.

The first dish Bridget ever literally cooked for Mark, with her own
hands, or indeed for any one else, was a mess of 'grass,' as it was the
custom of even the most polished people of America then to call
asparagus. They had gone together to the asparagus bed on Loam Island,
and had found the plant absolutely luxuriating in its favourite soil.
The want of butter was the greatest defect in this