"I must take it in kind, then—the sort of tribute that is exacted from native chiefs in Central Africa—though you can't bring me pounds of rubber or elephants' tusks here."
"We could pick you blackberries, if you like them," suggested Isobel; "or get you cockles and mussels from the shore. Sometimes the boys spear flukes. They're rather small and muddy, but they're quite nice to eat with bread and butter if you fry them yourself."
"My consumption of blackberries is limited," replied the colonel, "and there seems slight demand for shell-fish in my kitchen. The flukes might have done; but if they are only edible when you fry them yourself, I'm afraid it's no use, for I don't believe my housekeeper would allow me to try. No! I must think out the question of tribute, and let you know. I won't ask a rack rent, I promise you, and I suppose I could distrain on these tea things and the kettle if it were not paid up. The latter appears to be boiling over at this instant."
"So it is!" cried Isobel, lifting it off in a hurry. "I wonder," she continued shyly, "if you would care to have a cup of tea. I could make it in a moment, if you wouldn't mind drinking it out of a tin mug."
"Miss Robinson Crusoe is very hospitable. I haven't had a picnic for years. The tin mug will recall my early soldiering days. I have bivouacked in places which were not nearly so comfortable as this."
He took a seat in a sand armchair, and looked on with amusement while Isobel made her preparations. Something in the set of her slim little figure and the fall of her long straight fair hair attracted him, and he caught himself wondering of whom her gray eyes reminded him. He liked the quiet way she went about her business, and her frank, unaffected manners—so different from Belle's self-conscious assurance.
"Why can't the other child wear a plain holland frock?" he thought. "It would look much more suitable for the sands than those absurd trimmed-up costumes. What a pity she hasn't the sense of this one! Well, it's no use; it evidently isn't in her, and I doubt if any amount of training at a good school will make much difference."
Isobel in the meantime having brewed the tea handed it to him upon the scarlet tray.
"I'm sorry we haven't a cream jug," she apologized. "We always bring our milk in medicine bottles. Do you mind sugar out of the packet? I wish I had some cake, but Mrs. Jackson didn't put any in my basket to-day, and I don't like taking the others' without asking them. I hope it's nice," she added anxiously. "I'm so afraid the water's a little smoked."
"Delicious," said the colonel, who would have consumed far more unpalatable viands sooner than hurt her feelings, and who tried to overlook the fact that the tin mug gave the tea a curious flavour, and the bread and butter was of a thickness usually meted out to schoolboys. "But aren't you going to have any yourself?"