ad set his young affections; the
Rokebys clubbed together to buy muslin for window curtains; Belle
presented a looking-glass as a suitable offering; and Mrs. Barrington,
who was always generous when it was not a question of diet, allowed Ruth
and Edna to purchase a dozen pewter teaspoons, a bright blue enamelled
teapot, and a bread-and-butter plate with a picture of the Promenade at
Ferndale upon it. The sand-bank was rummaged for anything that would
come in handy, and though it did not yield such wonderful treasures as
the wrecked ship generally contains in desert-island stories, they found
several empty bottles, an old lantern, a dripping-tin, a wooden spoon,
and a battered bird-cage, all of which they decided might come in
useful in course of time and were carefully put by in a safe place among
the rocks.

Isobel, who toiled away at the camp with untiring zeal, had drawn and
painted a very nice map of the island on a sheet of cardboard, all the
various places being neatly marked, and had nailed it on the wall
inside. After a good deal of discussion it had been decided to call the
domain "Rocky Holme," the crag on the extreme summit was "Point
Look-Out," the tall cliff to the north, "Sea-Birds' Cape," while the one
on the south was "Welcome Head." The creek where they had established
their headquarters was christened by the appropriate name of "Sandy
Cove," and the hut bore the more romantic title of "Wavelet Hall." They
had fixed a broken mast at the end of the little garden for a flagstaff,
and ran up an ensign specially designed and executed for them by Mrs.
Stewart, consisting of a large sea urchin cut out of white calico, and
stitched upon a ground of turkey-red twill, with the initials
"U.S.U.R.S." below; so that, with their colours floating in the breeze
and the smoke of their fire rising in a thin white column among the
rocks, no band of colonists could have felt that the country was more
really and truly their own.

CHAPTER XII.

A FIRST QUARREL.

"The little rift within the lute,
That by-and-by will make the music mute,
And ever widening slowly silence all."

It had become an almost daily programme for the Sea Urchins to jump
across or even to wade through the channel the moment the tide was
sufficiently low to enable them to do so with safety, and to establish
themselves upon their desert island. The joys of pioneering seemed to
have quite put cricket in the shade; the hut had s