After a few days Mr. Crusoe gave up trying to carry his umbrella, and pitched it like a tent in our front yard, and the whole flock of goats used to come and lie under it in the middle of the day, and sleep under it at night. It blew over once or twice, but after that I made guys fast to it and led them to trees, and it was so nice and pleasant under the umbrella that I proposed to Mr. Crusoe that we should live under it altogether instead of living in our house, but he wouldn’t do it.
The goat-skin cap troubled him almost as much as the umbrella. I lost mine two or three days after it was given to me, though you can hardly imagine how much planning and smart seamanship it took to lose that cap in the water in just such a way that I couldn’t fish it out again. After that I went bareheaded, which was a great deal more comfortable than wearing a heavy cap, and I could see that Mr. Crusoe envied me.
He wouldn’t lose his cap, but he got into a habit of taking it off and carrying it under his arm whenever we were in the shade. Then he said that he was afraid he might drop it and lose it some day, so he fastened a lanyard to it, which he put around his neck, and which let the cap hang at his side under his left arm. Next he began to pick up pebbles and bits of wood whenever we were walking together, and as his cap was swinging handy at his side, he would drop his pebbles and things into it. So before very long he gave up using his cap for anything but a bag, and never thought of putting it on his head. I suppose he sometimes wished that he dared to wear his old comfortable Christian hat that he brought ashore from the wreck, but he was so much more comfortable with his goat-skin cap swinging at his side than he was when he used to try to wear it on his head that he was probably pretty well satisfied.
I thought of losing my goat-skin clothes, but I knew it would be of no use, and that Mr. Crusoe would be sure to build new ones for me, so I bore them as well as I could, and tried to enjoy seeing Mr. Crusoe suffer in his.
CHAPTER VII.
It was not very long after we had moved into our goat-skin clothes that Mr. Crusoe got up early one morning, and came and stood over me with an axe in his hand as I was lying asleep on my bed. I woke up suddenly, and saw him looking very solemn, and I thought at first that he must have been taken sick, so I asked him what was the matter, and if I could do anything for him.
“Nothing is the matter with me,” he replied; “but I am sorry you woke up, for I was just going to kill you.”
“That’s very kind in you, I’m sure,” said I; “but don’t you think, Mr. Crusoe, that you could manage to get along without killing me till after breakfast? I ought to get up and start the fire, you know.”
Now Mr. Crusoe couldn’t bear to start a fire, and whenever he tried it he always got his throat and eyes full of smoke, and couldn’t get anything to burn except kindlings. So he was glad to get rid of making a fire and getting breakfast that morning, and he told me that on second thoughts I might live till the coffee was ready.