"I'll try, but I don't feel much like eating. I want to go to sleep again."
And, indeed, in a few minutes she was sleeping. "The very best thing she could do," said Elizabeth to herself.
A quarter of an hour passed and Tommy had not returned. "I wonder why she is lagging," thought Elizabeth. She went to the entrance of the hut and looked down towards the shore. The trees hid the stove from her, and she did not call out for fear of waking Mary. She went back into the hut and sat down; but after five minutes, when there was still no Tommy, her vague wonder grew into a slight feeling of alarm. Seeing that Mary was still asleep, she went out again, and ran swiftly down towards the stove, glancing to the left with a half expectation of discovering Tommy fishing on the rocks. But Tommy was not in sight, and Elizabeth soon learnt why, as her eye caught the scribble on the sand.
"How plucky!" she thought. "But the child will be terrified before she gets there; I had better fetch her back."
But with a moment's reflection she saw that she could not expect to catch Tommy before she reached the top of the ridge. If there was any danger Tommy would have run into it by the time she could be overtaken. Mary was so weak that Elizabeth did not care to leave her for long; but she ran some distance up the stream, as far as the broad, bare avenue made by the storm, and then was on the point of giving a shrill call when she checked herself. The sound might cause the very harm she wished to avoid. Perturbed, and somewhat vexed as well, she hastened back, feeling that at present Mary must be her chief care. She reflected that, after all, though they had been now more than two months on the island, they had never met any other person, and had no real reason to think it was inhabited. Surely if the object Tommy had seen was actually a human being, they would by this time have had other evidence of his existence. Thus reassuring herself, she hurried back, took out of the oven the fish that was already over-baked, and regained the hut. To her great relief Mary was still fast asleep. Elizabeth dreaded the effect upon her if she suspected that anything had happened to Tommy.
As she ate her breakfast, reserving some of the fish for Tommy, she felt decidedly annoyed at the young girl's escapade. Tommy ought to have mentioned what she intended, thought Elizabeth. But Tommy had been from her earliest years impulsive and heedless, so that her present disobedience—for so Elizabeth had come to regard it, forgetting that no instructions had been given—was quite apiece with former instances. Then Elizabeth made amends to Tommy in her heart. "She has been very good all this time," she thought. "I do wish she would come back."
But the hours dragged by, and still Tommy had not appeared. Mary awoke, and looking round the hut, inquired again for Tommy.
"She has run up to get some oranges," said Elizabeth, as calmly as she could, though she felt very troubled.
"Tommy has?" said Mary, in surprise. "Gone alone to where she saw the face? Oh, you shouldn't have let her, Bess."
"I wouldn't have, only I did not know. She scrawled on the sand to say that she had gone. I suppose she thought I would make a better nurse than she."