“Glad you didn’t have time, Dick.  I’m afraid Tom might have taught you a few things.  Don’t you think you had better get over what one cat has done to you before you tackle another?”

“But Tom isn’t that kind of a cat, Ned.  I’m not afraid of his hurting me much.  He might scratch me a little at first, but he’d be sorry for it, soon as he had time to think it over.  Wouldn’t you, Tom?”

“Cats are cats, Dick, and I don’t think it’s safe to leave you alone with that wildcat.  You are too weak to help yourself if he really tackled you.”

“But he won’t attack me.  So what’s the use of talking about things that aren’t going to happen?  You are a good boy, Neddy, but you’ve got your limitations and you can’t appreciate Tom.”

[Illustration:  “THE COON SCRAMBLED TO THE TOP OF A LITTLE TREE”]

Ned spent much of his time coddling the invalid.  He paddled out in the lakes and among its keys.  He explored the waters and the woods and brought Dick wild grapes with much character and cocoa plums with little; sea-grapes with juice that had the taste of claret and the color of blood; figs, of which Dick said:  “De breed am small, but de flavor am delicious”; wild sapadillos that were sweet as honey, but chewed up into a solid ball of soft india rubber; and mastic berries that were delicious to the taste, but stuck like a porous plaster to the roof of the mouth.  He got out the rod and caught mangrove snappers from under the banks and sheephead from their hiding places among sunken logs and snags.  He dove for turtle that he never got and hacked at young palmettos for buds that he did get.

Days followed days and though Dick grew better he didn’t grow strong.  Ned got anxious and told his chum that he was going to take him to a doctor.  Dick laughed and said: 

“You are my doctor.  I’ve great confidence in you and don’t care to make a change.”

“Glad to hear it.  Your doctor, in whom you have such confidence, desires to consult with his brother physicians in Fort Myers regarding your case, and you will light out with him to-morrow.”

The next morning a little canoe with a cat couchant in the bow, a young invalid comfortably reclining amidships and a husky youth in the stern started down the river and into the salt-water lakes.  The first day’s run was a short one and the camp was made on a bit of high ground covered with thin grass and shaded by a group of palmettos.  It was bordered about with cocoa plums and sweet-smelling myrtle, on one of which flourished an orchid, the vanilla bean, which made heavy with its fragrance the whole camping site.

    “But there lurked a taint in the clime so blest,
    Like a serpent coiled in a ring-dove’s nest”—­