"Hello!" he exclaimed. "Here's an old friend who was in as bad a fix as we are, Joyce, and he lived through it."
Leaning over, without picking up the book from the floor, he began reading from the page, printed in the large type of a child's picture-book:
"'September 30, 1609. I, poor, miserable Robinson Crusoe, being shipwrecked during a dreadful storm in the offing, came on shore this dismal, unfortunate island, which I called the Island of Despair, all the rest of the ship's company being drowned, and myself almost dead. All the rest of the day I spent in afflicting myself at the dismal circumstances I was brought to, viz., I had neither house, clothes, weapons, nor place to fly to, and in despair of any relief saw nothing but death before me, either that I should be devoured by wild beasts, murdered by savages, or starved to death for want of food.'"
A long pause followed. Then Joyce sat up, looking teased, and held out her hand for the book. "I don't mind old Crusoe's preaching me a sermon," she said, as she turned the tattered leaves. "Now he's done it, I'll quit 'afflicting myself at the dismal circumstances I was brought to.' I've wished a thousand times, when I was smaller, that I could have been in his place, and had all his interesting adventures. And to think, here we are at last, in almost as bad a plight as he was. Only we have a weapon," she added, with a mischievous glance at the gun Jack was holding.
"And that means food, too," he answered, proudly, "for I expect to kill many a quail and duck with this."
"Oh, we're better off than Crusoe in a thousand ways, I suppose, if we'd only stop to count our blessings," she answered, now ready to take a more cheerful view of life since she had had her little outburst of rebellion. "He didn't have a Chinaman driving by with fresh vegetables twice a week, as we will have, and we have clothes, and a house, such as it is, and a place to fly to, for Lee's Ranch will always be open to us if we need a refuge."
"So we can start at the place where Crusoe was when he really began to enjoy his Island of Despair," said Jack. "Shall I go on unpacking these things? I stopped when you announced that you were going to give up and die, for I thought there wouldn't be any use trying to do anything, with you in the dumps like that."
Joyce looked around the dingy room. "It's not worth while to unpack till the place has been scrubbed from top to bottom. If we're going to make a home of it, we'll have to begin right. The landlord won't do anything, and we could hardly expect him to, considering the small amount of rent we pay, but I don't see how we can live in it without fresh paper and paint."