happened. She began looking through Robinson Crusoe , not exactly reading, for she had read it all many times before, but looking from page to page. She came first on the bit about sleeping in a tree for fear of ravenous beasts.
“I went to the tree, and getting up into it, endeavoured to place myself so as that if I should sleep I might not fall; and having cut me a short stick like a truncheon for my defence, I took up my lodging, and having been excessively fatigued, I fell fast asleep, and slept as comfortably as, I believe, few could have done in my condition, and found myself the most refreshed with it that I think I ever was on such an occasion.”
She wondered whether Robinson Crusoe had often slept in trees, and then whether there was any tree on the island that would be good for sleeping in. But then, there were no ravenous beasts.
Then she read the part about the footprint in the sand and remembered a number of things that she might have said to Man Friday.
Then, turning this way and that through the book she came on a passage which reminded her of Captain Flint.
“All the while I was at work,” wrote Robinson Crusoe, “I diverted myself with talking to my parrot, and teaching him to speak; and I quickly learned him to know his own name, and at last to speak it out pretty loud … Poll … which was the first word I ever heard spoken in the island by any mouth but my own. …”
Of course, if only she had a parrot, the island would be perfect. She thought of the green parrot on the rail of the houseboat. Then she remembered the jays that had flown chattering through the trees on the day when the Swallows had visited the charcoal-burners. The jays, like