The cellar was really an island, just like Robinson Crusoe's; for Billy and Teddy had digged a ditch all round it, and filled it with water; but it was a very trying sort of an ocean, 'cause we had to fill it up every morning.
BILLY WATCHING FOR SAVAGES.—Drawn by C. S. Reinhart.
Teddy, who could whittle nicely, made some little canoes, and when Billy was looking through the hose for savages, it was Teddy's part to poke the canoes with a long stick like a fish-pole, so they would float right in front of Billy's hose. Then Billy would scramble down the wall, and come running to us 'round behind the chimney, and tell us to lie very still, for there were seven canoes full of cruel savages sailing for the island.
Then we would all creep close to the chimney on the shady side, and not go out for two weeks, which meant about fifteen minutes (Billy counted seven minutes to a week), and we liked this part of Robinson Crusoe very much indeed, 'cause then Billy would give us what he called "rations"—nice sugary raisins, dried beef, and seed cookies, which he said were cocoa-nuts given to him by monkeys that lived in tall trees in another part of the island, where we should go with him some time when he was sure the savages had left.
Oh, if you never played Robinson Crusoe, you can't think what fun we had playing it, and we played almost the whole book through, sometimes one part, and sometimes another, and whatever part we played, Billy tried to have it just as near like what the book said as it could be made without a real ship, a real ocean, and a real island; and he was so in earnest that it seemed real to me, and I used to feel shivery and scared when he cried out that the savages were coming.
There were all sorts of nice rubbishy things in the cellar to play with, 'cause everything that got broken or too old for use in the house—or "the wreck," as Billy called it—got thrown out into the old cellar: empty fruit cans, broken dishes, leaky old pans and dippers, parts of broken chairs and broken looking-glasses, and old kettles and frying-pans; bits of shingles, old nails, and piles and piles of clam and oyster shells; and Billy knew the minute he saw a thing what to do with it.
Kate and I helped with pieces of muslin, ribbon, and old calico, so that every day the little square place behind the chimney was more and more like Robinson Crusoe's own house on the real island.
One day papa stopped and looked at us as he was going by, and said he was afraid it wasn't a safe place for us, the old chimney might tumble down on us, or we might cut our feet on some of the broken things; but mother only smiled and said, "Oh, do let the children be happy." I guess she was jolly to play with when she was a little girl.
She often came out, or sent Biddy out with a nice turn-over, or a plate of hot ginger cookies; and after papa spoke about the chimney, she climbed down into the cellar, and went over and felt the chimney all round to see if it was quite firm. Once we coaxed her to stay with us during the two weeks while the savages were on the island. Billy, who liked to play just what was in the book, said at first that Robinson Crusoe didn't ever have his mother with him, but he "guessed the man who wrote the story would have put that in if he had known what larks it was."