The wife heaved a sigh. "But poor Lucilla!" she said. "It is dreadful that she should be forced to grow up here."
"Lucilla?" asked Dickory.
"Yes, sir," she said, "my eldest daughter. But she is not here now."
Dickory thought that it was somewhat odd that he should be again informed of a fact which he knew very well, but he made no remarks upon the subject.
Still wearing his cocked hat--for he had nothing else with which to shield his head from the sun--and with his uniform coat on, for he had not yet an opportunity of ripping from it the letter he carried, and this he would not part from--Dickory roamed about the little settlement.
Mander was an industrious and thrifty man. His garden, his buildings, and his surroundings showed that.
Walking past a clump of low bushes, Dickory was startled by a laugh--a hearty laugh--the laugh of a girl. Looking quickly around, he saw, peering above the tops of the bushes, the face of the girl who had laughed.
"It is too funny!" she said, as his eyes fell upon her. "I never saw anything so funny in all my life. A man in regimentals in this weather and upon a desert island. You look as if you had marched faster than your army, and that you had lost it in the forest."
Dickory smiled. "You ought not to laugh at me," he said, "for these clothes are really a great misfortune. If I could change them for something cool I should be more than delighted."
"You might take off your heavy coat," said she; "you need not be on parade here. And instead of that awful hat, I can make you one of long grass. Do you see the one I have on? Isn't that a good hat? I have one nearly finished which I am making for my father; you may have that."
Dickory would most gladly have taken off his coat if, without observation, he could have transferred his sacred letter to some other part of his clothes, but he must wait for that. He accepted instantly, however, the offer of the hat.
"You seem to know all about me," he said; "did you hear me tell my story?"
"Every word of it," said she, "and it is the queerest story I ever heard. Think of a pirate carrying a man away to marry him to his daughter!"
"But why don't you come from behind that bush and talk to me?"
"I can't do it," said she, "I am dressed funnier than you are. Now I am going to make your hat." And in an instant she had departed.