Mike awoke next, and then Peggy and Nora together. Paul still slept on. The girls were full of joy to find themselves on the secret island, and they flew down to bathe in the lake with Mike. When Paul awoke they asked him if he too would like to have a swim, but he shook his head.
“I can’t swim,” he said. “And I don’t want to bathe in the lake. I just want to stay here with Jack.”
They got breakfast. Nora ran down to the lake to wash the supper things. Jack fetched more wood for the fire, which was burning well. Peggy cut big slices of bread and butter, and popped some eggs into the saucepan to boil. “Two eggs for everyone,” she said. “I know quite well you’ll all be able to eat heaps and heaps! Nora, find the salt, will you? I’ll boil the eggs hard, and we can nibble them and dip them in the salt.”
“Let’s have some of these ripe plums too,” said Mike, uncovering the basket. “They won’t last very long in this hot weather. And where are the biscuits, Peggy? Surely we didn’t finish them all last night.”
“Of course not,” said Peggy, fishing them out from under a bush and taking off the lid. “I hid them there because I know what you boys are with biscuits!”
They sat round in the heather, eating their hard-boiled eggs, thick slices of bread and butter, ripe plums, and biscuits, and drinking cocoa that Peggy had made for them.
“I don’t know why, but we always seem to have most delicious meals on our secret island,” said Mike. “They always taste nicer here than they do anywhere else.”
“Paul, don’t you want your second egg?” asked Peggy, seeing that Paul had not eaten it. He shook his head.
“I am not used to your English breakfasts,” he said. “At home, in my own country, we simply have a roll of bread and some coffee. But I would like to eat my egg later in the morning, Peggy. It is so nice. I have never had a hard-boiled egg before.”
Paul began to talk of his own land. He was a nice boy, with beautiful manners that struck the others as rather comic sometimes. He would keep bowing to Peggy and Nora whenever he spoke to them. He had learnt English from his governess, and spoke it just as well as the other children did.