“Then how did it happen that you didn’t see the footprint before you made a Friday of me? There is something wrong about that.”
I only said this just to aggravate Mr. Crusoe a little, but I was sorry afterwards, for it made him miserable. You see he couldn’t find any way out of it, and he felt that he hadn’t done precisely as his grandfather did, and so he wrung his hands and said he was a miserable sinner.
After coaxing him a long while I got him to agree to come with me and look at the footprint; but first he made me hunt up my goat-skin clothes and get into them. They felt more uncomfortable than ever, for I had been enjoying a blue flannel shirt and real Christian trousers while I was away in the canoe, and I could hardly walk when I got into the goat-skins. I have always thought that making me wear goat-skins was the meanest thing Mr. Crusoe did all the time I was with him; but then I suppose the poor man thought he was doing right.
When we came to the beach I saw the footprint. There couldn’t be any doubt about it. The footprint was made by a lady’s shoe, and she must have been one of the very finest of ladies, for her shoe had such a heel that she couldn’t possibly have walked half a mile without being lame.
“There,” said Mr. Crusoe, “will you now dare to say that I made that footprint?”
“Well,” I said, “I don’t believe you did; and what’s more, I never knew you to have hair-pins in your hair, either.”
“What do you mean?” asked he.
“I mean that this thing that I have just picked up is a hair-pin, and it must have been dropped by the woman who made the footprint.”
Mr. Crusoe looked at the hair-pin and shook all over.
“We are done for now!” he exclaimed.