He chucked these one at a time across the river, and then went for more. It took him all the afternoon to get all the pods across the river. He was obliged to sit down and rest.
But a suggestion of Helen's soon set him to work again.
"You were kind enough to say you would store these for me. Could you not store them so as to wall out those terrible beasts with them?"
"What terrible beasts?"
"That roar so all night, and don't eat us, only because they have not found out we are here yet. But they will."
"I deny their existence," said Hazel. "But I'll wall them out all the same," said he.
"Pray do," said Helen. "Wall them out first, and disprove them afterward; I shall be better able to believe they don't exist when they are well walled out—much."
Hazel went to work, and with her assistance laid cocoa-pods two wide and three deep, outside the northern and western sides of her leafy bower, and he promised to complete the walls by the same means in two days more.
They all then supped together, and, to oblige him, she ate a little of the terrapin, and, when they parted for the night, she thanked him, and said, with a deep blush, "You have been a good friend to me—of late."
He colored high, and his eyes sparkled with delight; and she noticed, and almost wished she had kept her gratitude to herself.