Page:Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Volume 6.djvu/198

188 so well; but still I didn't believe in the island story, and used to joke them about their ambition. They were very good-natured, and only answered me, 'Wait a little longer, Friend Right'. I had my own affairs to attend to; so, for years at a time, I forgot the coral-workers, and spent most of my life up Greenland way, for warm climates don't agree with my constitution. When I came back, after a long absence, I was astonished to see the tree grown into a large umbrella-shaped thing, rising above the water. Sea-weed had washed up and clung there; sea-birds had made nests there; land-birds and the winds had carried seeds there, which had sprung up; trunks of trees had been cast there by the sea; lizards, insects, and little animals came with the trees, and were the first inhabitants; and, behold! it was an island."

"What did you say then?" asked Freddy.

"I was angry, and didn' want to own that I was wrong; so I insisted that it wasn't a real island, without people on it. Wait a little longer, answered the polypes; and went on, building broader and broader foundations. I flounced away in a rage, and didn't go back for a great while. I hoped something would happen to the coral builders and their island; but I was so curious that I couldn't keep away, and, on going back there, I found a settlement of fishermen, and the beginning of a