ate to be down here at the end
of the garden all alone, with a long, dark walk before her if she
should go back to the house; and she began to think that the Swiss
Family Robinson had a better time than Robinson Crusoe, since they were
all together, and poor Crusoe must often have been very lonely all by
himself, before his man Friday came to live with him.

If Ruthy had only been there, Ruby thought she would have made a very
good man Friday, but she was quite sure that nothing would have
persuaded Ruthy to stay out of doors at night.

"I am not a little 'fraid-cat like Ruthy," said Ruby to herself, trying
to pretend that she was not at all lonely nor frightened. "I would
just as lief stay out here every night. I wonder what time it is. I
guess it must be nearly morning. I was asleep just hours and hours, I
think. I am dreadfully hungry, so it must be ever so long since I had
my supper. I had better eat some provisions, maybe."

Ruby was not really very hungry, but she wanted to be as much like the
Swiss Family Robinson as possible, so she sat up and sleepily nibbled
at some cookies.

"I don't think these are very nice cookies," she said, as she tried to
keep up the pretence that she was very hungry. "I wish they were
cocoanuts. They would be ever so much nicer."

"I wish this was a big, tall cocoanut-tree," Ruby went on. "And that
it was just full of cocoanuts, and that some monkeys had a nest in it,
and would throw me down cocoanuts whenever I wanted one. It would hurt
if they hit me on the head though. I guess I would have to live under
another tree, so as to be sure the cocoanuts would n't drop on me. I
wonder if monkeys live in nests. Of course they don't live in
bird's-nests, but maybe they take sticks up into trees, and make little
nests, and--and--"

Ruby nodded so hard that she woke up again. She had nearly gone to
sleep sitting straight up, she was so sleepy.

"I don't want to go to sleep just yet," she said. "I am going to stay
awake, so. I might just as well be in bed as keep asleep out here all
the time. I guess I will make a fire, and then that will be just like
a real castaway."

The sticks and matches were all ready, and Ruby struck a match and
lighted the little fire. It was not a very large pile of sticks, and
Ruby had not thought that it would make much of a blaze, but the
shavings underneath, and the light, dry sticks upon the top, were very
ready to take fire and make as