Sarah says that they are most to her liking, because it is not necessary to spend very much time each week polishing them, as we are forced to do with the pewter spoons. Some day, after we own cows, we can use the large, flat clam shells with which to skim milk, and when we make our own butter and cheese, we shall be rich indeed. [Illustration] After the pumpkins ripened, and when the gourds in the Indian village were hardened, we added to our store of bowls and cups until the kitchen was much the same as littered with them, and all formed of the pumpkin and gourd shells. Out of the gourd shells we made what were really most serviceable dippers, and even bottles, while in the pumpkin shell dishes we kept much of our supply of Indian corn. [Illustration] Captain Standish gave me two of the most beautiful turkey wings, to be used as brushes; but they are so fine that mother has them hung on the wall as ornaments, and we sweep the hearth with smaller and less perfect wings from the birds or turkeys father has brought home. This no doubt seems to you of Scrooby a queer way of keeping house. THE FORT AND MEETING-HOUSE That which Captain Standish calls a fort is very much like our homes, or the Common House, except that it is larger, and has small, square openings high up on the walls to serve both as windows and places through which our people can shoot at an enemy, if any come against us. Surely there are none in this new world who should wish us harm, and yet my father says that we have need to guard ourselves carefully, because Squanto and Samoset have both insisted that a tribe of savages who call themselves Narragansetts, and who live quite a long distance away, may seek to drive us from the land. This fort, the logs of which are sunken so deeply into the earth that they cannot easily be overthrown, has been built on the highest land within the settlement, and extending from it in such a manner as to make it a corner of the enclosure, is a fence of logs, which Captain Standish calls a palisade, built to form a square. The fence is made like the sides of our houses; but the logs rise higher above the surface than the head of the tallest man. There are two gates in the palisade, one on the side nearest the fort, with the other directly opposite, and these can be fastened with heavy logs on the inside. All the people have been told that at the first signal of danger, they must flee without loss of time inside the fence of logs, after which the gates will be barred, and no person may go on the outside without permission from Captain Standish.