But Judith took up the matter in grand gravity.
“Bonnet?” she echoed. “Sure mine was lost itself in a fray fight wid the say!—Bonnet? Faix, it was all I could do at all, at all, to kape the hair itself on me head, let alone bonnets!”
“Then we must improvise some defense for your heads against this sun,” said Mr. Rosenthal, looking around. “Ah! I have it! the palm leaves! nothing could be better!” he exclaimed, starting off in a run through the thicket toward the grove of cocoa palms.
“Ah! sure, what would we do without him, at all, at all! Troth, we hadn’t aven a dacent meal’s victuals till he come to our relaif, so we hadn’t. Sure, we’d perish intirely only for him,” said Judith, looking gratefully in the direction where Justin had disappeared.
The man-hater did not reply. There was no controverting Judith’s words. Perhaps also they expressed Britomarte’s own thoughts. What, indeed, though one was brave and the other strong, could these two women have done for self-preservation, left alone on this desert island, without the help of the one man Providence had sent to their assistance?
Justin soon returned, bearing large palm leaves, which, with some natural dexterity, he doubled and shaped into a rude sort of hoods, more remarkable for utility than for beauty.
“There,” he said; “they are not in the latest Parisian style of ladies’ bonnets, I am afraid, but they will keep the sun off, and to do that is the purpose for which they were formed. I hope we may all answer the end of our creation as well.”
When they were about to start, the little dog, seeing symptoms of a move, began jumping and frisking around them, to testify his approbation of the journey and his willingness to share it.
“No, you don’t, my fine little fellow. I have had enough of crossing the causeway with you. I had rather carry a two-year-old child at once. We’ll leave you here,” said Justin, looking about for some means of confining the dog.
To “leave him” there was easier to say than to do. They might have tied him to a tree, only they had neither rope nor chain. Or they might have shut him up in the grotto, only they had no door to close against his exit.