Billy had just decided to run down to the livery stable to pay Sam Lamb a visit when the gate opened, and Lina and Frances, their beloved dolls in their arms, came skipping in.

Jimmy, who had had a difference with Billy and was in the sulks on his own side of the fence, immediately crawled over and joined the others in the swing. He was lonesome and the prospect of companionship was too alluring for him to nurse his anger longer.

“Aunt Minerva\'s gone to the Aid Society,” remarked the host. “Don\'t y\' all wish it met ev\'y day \'stid \'er jes\' meetin\' ev\'y Monday?”

“Yes, I do,” agreed Frances, “you can have so much fun when our mamas go to the Aid. My mama\'s gone too, so she left me with Brother and he\'s writing a love letter to Ruth Shelton, so I slipped off.”

“Mother has gone to the Aid, too,” said Lina.

“My mama too,” chimed in Jimmy, “she goes to the Aid every Monday and to card parties nearly all the time. She telled Sarah Jane to \'tend to me and Sarah Jane\'s asleep. I hear her snoring. Ain\'t we glad there ain\'t no grown folks to meddle? Can\'t we have fun?”

“What\'ll we play?” asked Frances, who had deliberately stepped in a mud puddle on the way, and splashed mud all over herself, “let\'s make mud pies.”

“Naw, we ain\'t a-going to make no mud pies,” objected Jimmy. “We can make mud pies all time when grown folks \'r\' looking at you.”

“Le\'s\'s play sumpin\' what we ain\'t never play, sence we \'s born,” put in Billy.

“I hope grandmother won\'t miss me.” said Lina, “she \'s reading a very interesting book.”

“Let\'s play Injun!” yelled Jimmy; “we ain\'t never play\' Injun.”

This suggestion was received with howls of delight.

“My mama\'s got a box of red stuff that she puts on her face when she goes to the card parties. She never puts none on when she just goes to the Aid. I can run home and get the box to make us red like Injuns,” said Frances.

“My mother has a box of paint, too.”

“I ain\'t never see Aunt Minerva put no red stuff on her face,” remarked Billy, disappointedly.

“Miss Minerva, she don\'t never let the Major come to see her, nor go to no card parties is the reason,” explained the younger boy, “she just goes to the Aid where they ain\'t no men, and you don\'t hafter put no red on your face at the Aid. We\'ll let you have some of our paint, Billy. My mama\'s got \'bout a million diff\'ent kinds.”

“We got to have pipes,” was Frances\'s next suggestion.

“My papa\'s got \'bout a million pipes,” boasted Jimmy, “but he got \'em all to the office, I spec\'.”

“Father has a meerschaum.”

“Aunt Minerva ain\'t got no pipe.”

“Miss Minerva\'s \'bout the curiousest woman they is,” said Jimmy; “she ain\'t got nothing a tall; she ain\'t got no paint and she ain\'t got no pipe.”

“Ladies don\'t use pipes, and we can do without them anyway,” said Lina, “but we must have feathers; all Indians wear feathers.”

“I\'ll get my mama\'s duster,” said Jimmy.

“Me, too,” chimed in Frances.

Here Billy with flying colors came to the fore and redeemed Miss Minerva\'s waning reputation.

“Aunt Minerva\'s got a great, big buncher tu\'key feathers an\' I can git \'em right now,” and the little boy flew into the house and was back in a few seconds.

“We must have blankets, of course,” said Lina, with the air of one whose word is law; “mother has a genuine Navajo.”

“I got a little bow\'narruh what Santa Claus bringed me,” put in Jimmy.

“We can use hatchets for tomahawks,” continued the little girl. “Come on, Frances; let us go home and get our things and come back here to dress up. Run, Jimmy, get your things! You, too, Billy!” she commanded.

The children ran breathlessly to their homes nearby and collected the different articles necessary to transform them into presentable Indians. They soon returned, Jimmy dumping his load over the fence and tumbling after; and the happy quartette sat down on the grass in Miss Minerva\'s yard. First the paint boxes were opened and generously shared with Billy, as with their handkerchiefs they spread thick layers of rouge over their charming, bright, mischievous little faces.

The feather decoration was next in order.

“How we goin\' to make these feathers stick?” asked Billy.

They were in a dilemma till the resourceful Jimmy came to the rescue.

“Wait a minute,” he cried, “I\'ll be back \'fore you can say \'Jack Robinson\'.”

He rolled over the fence and was back in a few minutes, gleefully holding up a bottle.

“This muc\'lage\'ll make \'em stick,” he panted, almost out of breath.

Lina assumed charge of the head-dresses. She took Billy first, rubbed the mucilage well into his sunny curls, and filled his head full of his aunt\'s turkey feathers, leaving them to stick out awkwardly in all directions and at all angles. Jimmy and Frances, after robbing their mothers\' dusters, were similarly decorated, and last, Lina, herself, was tastefully arrayed by the combined efforts of the other three.

At last all was in readiness.

Billy, regardless of consequences, had pinned his aunt\'s newest grey blanket around him and was viewing, with satisfied admiration, its long length trailing on the-grass behind him; Lina had her mother\'s treasured Navajo blanket draped around her graceful little figure; Frances, after pulling the covers off of several beds and finding nothing to suit her fanciful taste, had snatched a gorgeous silk afghan from the leather couch in the library. It was an expensive affair of intricate pattern, delicate stitches; and beautiful embroidery with a purple velvet border and a yellow satin lining. She had dragged one corner of it through the mud puddle and torn a big rent in another place.

Jimmy w............