shore, and now and again the faint rustling of wind in the leaves. But there were no human noises at all. Nobody was clattering tins. Nobody was washing up plates. Roger was not there to be looked after. Susan was not there to be looking after both of them. John was not at the lookout place, or splicing ropes in Swallow at the other end of the island. Nothing was being done by anybody on the island. Nothing would be done if she did not do it herself. It was like being the only person in the world.
Suddenly she heard the chug, chug, chug of a steamer on its way down the lake. On ordinary days nobody bothered much about steamers except Roger, but today, on hearing it, Able-seaman Titty jumped up and ran out of the tent into the sunlight. Through the trees on the western shore she could see the steamer passing the island a long way off. She looked at it through the telescope. There were a lot of people on deck, and she could see one of the sailors at the wheel. Perhaps the people on the steamer were looking at the island. They did not know that there was nobody on the island except one able-seaman who had been wrecked there five-and-twenty years before. Of course, that was because she had not waved a flag to show that she was there, and waiting to be rescued. But who would wave a flag to be rescued if they had a desert island of their own? That was the thing that spoilt Robinson Crusoe . In the end he came home. There never ought to be an end.
The steamer hurried on down the lake, and Titty followed it through the trees on the high western shore of the island. The path to the harbour was turning into a regular beaten track. “It really looks as if I’d been here for years and years,” said Titty, “but it’s a pity I’ve got no goats. Goats would soon have nibbled off all these branches that hang across the path, and catch your hair if you try to run along it in a hurry.” She took out her knife and began pruning the branches to make the path better. Every branch that hung across the path and was low enough to be in the way she broke or cut off until by working hard she had cleared the track the