was getting under foot
and courting caresses as eagerly as though all his life he had
lived on human bounty, instead of bringing down his own game in
royal freedom. Yet with all his well-bred geniality there was no
wandering of his allegiance. I was his undisputed queen and lady
paramount.

Crusoe, then, became a member of the party in good and regular
standing--much more so than his mistress. Mr. Tubbs compared him
not unfavorably with a remarkable animal of his own, for which the
New York Kennel Club had bidden him name his own price, only to be
refused with scorn. Violet tolerated him. Aunt Jane called him a
dear weenty pettums love. Captain Magnus kicked him when he
thought I was not looking, Cuthbert Vane chummed with him in
frankest comradeship, and Mr. Shaw softened toward him to an extent
which made me mainly murmur _Love me, love my dog_--only reversed.
Not that I _in the least_ wanted to be loved, only you feel it an
impertinence in a person who so palpably does not love you to
endeavor to engage the affections of your bull-terrier.

As to Cookie, he magnanimously consented to overlook Crusoe's
dubious past as a ghost-pig, and fed him so liberally that the
terrier's lean and graceful form threatened to assume the contours
of a beer-keg.

VIII

AN EXCURSION AND AN ALARM

As the only person who had yet discovered anything on the island, I
was now invested with a certain importance. Also, I had a
playfellow and companion for future walks, in lieu of Cuthbert
Vane, held down tight to the thankless toil of treasure-hunting by
his stem taskmaster. But at the same time I was provided with an
annoying, because unanswerable, question which had lodged at the
back of my mind like a crumb in the throat:

By what strange chance had the copra gatherer gone away and left
Crusoe on the island?

Since the discovery of Crusoe the former inhabitant of the cabin in
the clearing had been much in my thoughts. I had been dissatisfied
with him from the beginning, first, because he was not a pirate,
and also because he had left behind no relic more fitting than a
washtub. Not a locket, not a journal, not his own wasted form
stretched upon a pallet--

I had expressed these sentiments to Cuthbert Vane, who replied that
in view of the washtub it was certain that the hermit of the island
had not been a pirate, as he understood they never washed. I said
neither did any orthodox hermit, to which Mr. Vane rejoi