Elizabeth saw it was time to intervene. The girls' nerves were a little on edge.
"I dare say you are both right," she said tranquilly. "Tommy evidently saw something, and though there are no large native animals, Mary, perhaps it's an imported one. We can't tell but that there are people over there, and they might have anything, you know."
"Of course they might," said Tommy triumphantly. "It might be an elephant or anything."
And so the little storm blew over, but it made Elizabeth very thoughtful. As she lay awake that night, she resolved that something must be done to occupy their thoughts. "It will never do to idle away our time, as we've been doing," she said to herself, "or there'll be constant bickerings, and we shall all get slack and mopish. Oh, dear!"
And she did not sleep before she had made a plan.
"Now, my dears," said Elizabeth as they sat at breakfast next morning, "I've got an idea."
"Hurray!" cried Tommy. "What is it, Bess?"
"It's just this. We must act as if we were going to stay on this island for ever."
Tommy gasped, and a look of dismay came into her eyes.
"Don't you think we'll be rescued, then?" she asked.
"Oh, I don't give up hope. We may be seen from a ship any day, or Uncle may come for us; but we can't depend on it. Plenty of men and boys have been shipwrecked like us on a lonely island, and have managed to shift for themselves. Why shouldn't we? We're used to outdoor work: at least, _I_ am, and it would be an odd thing if we couldn't manage to make ourselves comfortable on an island like this, with half our work already done for us."
"Why, if you're right about there being plenty of fruit--and I don't see why you shouldn't be--we shan't have to grow our food, and that's the chief thing. So we shall have more time for other things. The first thing is to see just what we've got. Here's mine."
She turned out her pocket, and displayed two handkerchiefs, a thimble, a small whistle and her jack-knife.
"That's not a great deal," she said, smiling. "Now, Mary."
"There's my knife, and a hanky, and my little pen-knife, and hurray! my housewife."
And as she suddenly remembered that on the night before the storm she had been mending her uncle's clothes, the recollection almost moved her to tears.