For this and other reasons she passed the night in sore perplexity, and did not sleep till morning; and so she overslept her usual time. However, when she was up, she determined to find her own breakfast; she felt it would not do to be too dependent, and on a person of uncertain humor; such for the moment she chose to pretend to herself was Hazel. Accordingly she went down to the sea to look for crayfish. She found abundance. There they lay in the water; you had but to stoop and pick them up.
But alas! they were black, lively, viperish; she went with no great relish for the task to take one up; it wriggled maliciously; she dropped it, and at that very moment, by a curious coincidence, remembered she was sick and tired of crayfish; she would breakfast on fruits. She crossed the sand, took off her shoes, and paddled through the river, and; having put on her shoes again, was about to walk up through some rank grass to the big wood, when she heard a voice behind her, and it was Mr. Hazel. She bit her lip (it was broad daylight now), and prepared quietly to discourage this excessive assiduity. He came up to her panting a little, and, taking off his hat, said, with marked respect, "I beg your pardon, Miss Rolleston, but I know you hate reptiles; now there are a few snakes in that long grass; not poisonous ones."
"Snakes!" cried Helen; "let me get home; there—I'll go without my breakfast."
"Oh, I hope not," said Hazel, ruefully; "why, I have been rather fortunate this morning, and it is all ready."
"That is a different thing," said Helen, graciously; "you must not have your trouble for nothing, I suppose."
Directly after breakfast, Hazel took his ax and some rope from the boat, and went off in a great hurry to the jungle. In half an hour or so he returned, dragging a large conical shrub, armed with spikes for leaves, incredibly dense and prickly.
"There," said he, "there's a vegetable porcupine for you. This is your best defense against that roaring bugbear."
"That little tree!" said Helen; "the tiger would soon jump over that."
"Ay, but not over this and sixty more; a wall of stilettos. Don't touch it, please."
He worked very hard all day, and brought twelve of these prickly trees to the bower by sunset. He was very dissatisfied with his day's work; seemed quite mortified.