"Unless you get another tinkering job. By the way, why not call at old Crawshay's, and ask if she got home safe? I think that would be a very proper thing to do, and the old buffer would appreciate it. Good for evil, you know; coals of fire; turning the other cheek, and all that."
"You can turn your own cheek, Percy. You've got enough of it."
"Do you allude to my facial rotundity, which is Nature's gift, or to my urbanity of manner, my----"
"Dry up, man. It's too early in the morning for fireworks. So long."
Pratt gave a further proof of his tact when he started with Armstrong on their tour of exploration. Instead of striking southward, in the direction of the ruins, he set off to the north-west. "The island's so small," he reflected, "that we are bound to work round to that cottage, and then----"
Daylight showed the undergrowth dense indeed, but not so impenetrable as it had seemed overnight. At the cost of a few scratches from bramble bushes laden with ripening blackberries, they pushed their way through to the western shore, overlooking the broader channel and the right bank of the river; then they turned south, zigzagging to find the easiest route.
Hitherto, except for the whirr of a bird, or the scurry of some small animal, they had neither seen nor heard anything betokening that the island had any other visitors than themselves. But not long after their change of course they came to a spot where the grass had recently been trampled.
"Oh, poor Robinson Crusoe!" hummed Pratt.
"Here's a wire snare," exclaimed Armstrong. "Some one's rabbiting."
"Very likely Siren Rush," Pratt returned. "It wasn't original malice that prompted him to warn us against the island, but a sophisticated fear of competition. I dare say he made tons of money out of rabbits in the lean time during the war; skinned them and the shop people too!"