Schillie.—"Good lack! if you are not mad to think of such a thing! I am gasping with heat, and really melt away so fast, on the slightest exertion, and have such indifferent dinners to make amends, that if the captain does not arrive precisely to his date, my skin will be a bag containing nothing but rattling bones."
Mother.—"Don't distress yourself, you look very jolly yet, and if those cannibals come, of whom Madame is so afraid, you will be the first delicate morsel chosen, I am certain. But about this hut."
Schillie.—"Don't, June, you will kill me outright if you mention such hard work again. Let us go and botanize a bit. Did you ever see such a fellow as this! He must be a plantain I think."
Mother.—"Yes! these are the broad leaves that will roof our hut!"
Schillie.—"You will drive me mad with your hut, who wants a hut? and what is the good of putting ourselves into a fever, spoiling our hands, and such like, merely for your whims. Let us go round that point, and see if any turtle land on this island. I am sure it will be a blessing to have something decent to eat."
Mother.—"I shall be delighted to go, but I think we shall dirty our hands much more slaughtering a great turtle than building a nice little hut."
Schillie.—"Now, Mrs. June, if you bother me any more about that hut, I won't stir one finger to help you."
Mother.—"Oh, so you will help me, well! that's all I want, so sit down here while I tell you all about my hut."
She made some ineffectual efforts to escape, was very indignant, stormed, and spluttered, and wound up by saying, "Well! now, my Mistress, what do you wish me to do?" which was exactly the state into which I had intended to bully her. "You know how hot we are in the tent every night," said I. "Good me! and those horrid girls snoring and talking, one worse than another, to say nothing of someone who shall be nameless snoring like ten pigs." "That snorer is not me, I flatter myself, so make no more remarks, but listen, you see I have brought you to a very pretty little spot on the cliffs, and here are six or seven nice little trees, that look so pliant and slender we can bend them into any shape, but you are not listening."
Schillie.—"I wonder what trees these are. They all seem to proceed from the same mass of roots, and yet they are nearly in the form of a square; leaves, shiny, dark, green, pinnated, I cannot make them out."