Blake shook his head. “No; I’ll sleep to-day, and work rebuilding the barricade to-night. Toward morning I might build up the fire, and take a nap.”
He caught up the flag and its new staff, and swung away through the cleft.
He returned much sooner than Miss Leslie expected, and at once began to throw up a small lean-to of bamboos over a ledge at the cliff foot, behind the baobab. The girl thought he was making himself a hut, in place of the canopy under which he had slept before the storm, which, like Winthrope’s, had been carried away. But when he stopped work, he laconically informed her that all she had to do to complete her new house was to dry some leaves.
“But I thought it was for yourself!” she protested. “I will sleep inside the tree.”
“Doc Blake says no!” he rejoined–“not till it’s dried out.”
She glanced at his face, and replied, without a moment’s hesitancy: “Very well. I will do what you think best.”
“That’s good,” he said, and went at once to lie down for his much needed sleep.
He awoke just soon enough before dark to see the results of her hard day’s labor. All the provisions stored in the tree had been brought out to dry, and a great stack of fuel, ready for burning, was piled up against the baobab; while all about the tree the rubbish had been neatly gathered together in heaps. Blake looked his admiration for her industry. But then his forehead wrinkled.
“You oughtn’t to’ve done so much,” he admonished.
“I’ll show you I can tote fair!” she rejoined. During the afternoon she had called to mind that odd expression of a Southern girl chum, and had been waiting her opportunity to banter him with it.