“Gee,” said Honey, after they had all disappeared, “that took the last drop of resolution in me.  By Jove, you don’t suppose they’ll get sore and stay away for good?”

Frank shook his head.

Day by day the men worked on the Clubhouse; they worked their hardest from the moment of sunrise to the instant of sunset.  It was a square building, big compared with the little cabins.  They made a wide, heavy door at one end and long windows with shutters on both sides.  These were kept closed.

“Only one more day’s work,” Frank said at the end of a fortnight, “and then — .”

They finished the Clubhouse, as he prophesied, the next day.

“Now to furnish it,” Frank said.

They put up rough shelves and dressing-tables.  They put in chairs and hammocks.  Then, working secretly at night when the moon was full, or in the morning just after sunrise — at any time during the day when the girls were not in sight — they transferred the contents of a half a dozen women’s trunks to the Clubhouse.  They hung the clothes conspicuously in sight; they piled many small toilet articles on tables and shelves; they placed dozens of mirrors about.

“It looks like a sale at the Waldorf,” Honey said as they stood surveying the effect.  “Tomorrow, we begin our psychological siege.  Is that right, Frank?”

“Psychological siege is right,” answered Frank with an unaccustomed gayety and an unaccustomed touch of slang.

In the meantime the girls had shown their pique at this treatment in a variety of small ways.  Peachy and Clara made long detours around the island in the effort not to pass near the camp.  Chiquita and Lulu flew overhead, but only in order to throw pebbles and sand down on the men while they were working.

Julia alone took no part in this feud.  If she was visible at all, it was only as a glittering speck in the far-off reaches of the blue sky.

The next time the four girls approached the island, the men arose immediately from their work.  With an ostentatious carelessness, they went into the Clubhouse.  With an ostentatious carefulness, they closed the door.  They stayed there for three hours.

Outside, the girls watched this maneuver in visible astonishment.  They drew together and talked it over, flew down close to the Clubhouse, flew about it in circles, examined it on every side, made even one perilous trip across the roof, the tips of their feet tapping it in vicious little dabs.  But flutter as they would, jabber as they would, the Clubhouse preserved a tomb-like silence.  After a while they banged on the shutters and knocked against the door; but not a sound or movement manifested itself inside.

They flew away finally.

The next day the same thing happened — and the next — and the next.

But on the fourth day, something quite different occurred.

The instant the men saw the girls approaching, they carefully closed the door and windows of the Clubhouse, and then marched into the interior of the island.  Close by the lake, there was a thick jungle of trees — a place where the branches matted together, in a roof-like structure, leaving a cleared space below.  The men crawled into this shelter on their hands and knees for an eighth of a mile.  They stayed there three hours.