"Can you build a house?"
"One never knows what one can do till one tries. This is a great place for bringing out one's unknown faculties. I've done a good many things I never expected to do, since I came here."
"It might be a good plan. Can't it wait till I can help?"
"We'll see. We must do like the ants and squirrels—work hard while it's fine and get in our supplies for the winter. We are mighty fortunate to have such a store to draw upon."
He spent all the rest of the day slaving like a charwoman on the 'Jane and Mary,' and The Girl lay in her nest watching him, as he went up and down, now flinging rubbish overboard, then hauling up buckets of water, and sluicing and mopping, with every now and again a cheery wave of hand or mop in her direction, and long periods below devoted, she did not doubt, to the doing of more of those things which he had never done, or expected to do, until he came there. And her heart was very warm to him, knowing that it was not for his own comfort but for hers that all these great labours were toward.
She saw him busy on deck, bending and bobbing up and down, and once she caught the gleam of vivid colours, and wondered what he was at. He was a long time below after that, and then he went ashore for a load of sand, and when it was getting dark she suddenly caught glimpse of his head in the water as he wound up the day's work with a very necessary swim.
He came across on the raft all aglow, but visibly tired and hungry, and greeted her with a cheery, "I think you'll find it all to your liking. I've swabbed away every trace of the former tenants and everything is fresh and new."
"I wish I could have helped."
"Oh, but you did, by sitting quietly here and getting better, to say nothing of a wave of the hand now and then."
"That was not doing much when you were working like a——"