taken
a mate. They had built a nest out of fibres pulled from the wrappings
of the cocoa-nut fronds, bits of stick and wire grass--anything, in
fact; even fibres from the palmetto thatch of the house below. The
pilferings of birds, the building of nests, what charming incidents
they are in the great episode of spring!

The hawthorn tree never bloomed here, the climate was that of eternal
summer, yet the spirit of May came just as she comes to the English
countryside or the German forest. The doings in the artu branches
greatly interested Emmeline.

The love-making and the nest-building were conducted quite in the usual
manner, according to rules laid down by Nature and carried out by men
and birds. All sorts of quaint sounds came filtering down through the
leaves from the branch where the sapphire-coloured lovers sat side by
side, or the fork where the nest was beginning to form: croonings and
cluckings, sounds like the flirting of a fan, the sounds of a squabble,
followed by the sounds that told of the squabble made up. Sometimes
after one of these squabbles a pale blue downy feather or two would
come floating earthwards, touch the palmetto leaves of the house-roof
and cling there, or be blown on to the grass.

It was some days after the appearance of the schooner, and Dick was
making ready to go into the woods and pick guavas. He had all the
morning been engaged in making a basket to carry them in. In
civilisation he would, judging from his mechanical talent, perhaps have
been an engineer, building bridges and ships, instead of palmetto-leaf
baskets and cane houses--who knows if he would have been happier?

The heat of midday had passed, when, with the basket hanging over his
shoulder on a piece of cane, he started for the woods, Emmeline
following. The place they were going to always filled her with a vague
dread; not for a great deal would she have gone there alone. Dick had
discovered it in one of his rambles.

They entered the wood and passed a little well, a well without apparent
source or outlet and a bottom of fine white sand. How the sand had
formed there, it would be impossible to say; but there it was, and
around the margin grew ferns redoubling themselves on the surface of
the crystal-clear water. They left this to the right and struck into
the heart of the wood. The heat of midday still lurked here; the way
was clear, for there was a sort of path between the trees, as if, in
very ancient days, there