“Aw, say!” he exclaimed reproachfully. “I bet you Aunt Margaret is right. He is going to be your beau!”
Elnora stooped to kiss Billy as she caught her mother.
“There, there!” cried Mrs. Comstock. “Don't knock my headgear into my eye. I'm not sure I've got either hat or hair. The wind blew like bizzem coming up the river.”
She shook out her skirts, straightened her hat, and came forward to meet Philip, who took her into his arms and kissed her repeatedly. Then he passed her along to Freckles and the Angel to whom her greetings were mingled with scolding and laughter over her wind-blown hair.
“No doubt I'm a precious spectacle!” she said to the Angel. “I saw your pa a little before I started, and he sent you a note. It's in my satchel. He said he was coming up next week. What a lot of people there are in this world! And what on earth are all of them laughing about? Did none of them ever hear of sickness, or sorrow, or death? Billy, don't you go to playing Indian or chasing woodchucks until you get out of those clothes. I promised Margaret I'd bring back that suit good as new.”
Then the O'More children came crowding to meet Elnora's mother.
“Merry Christmas!” cried Mrs. Comstock, gathering them in. “Got everything right here but the tree, and there seems to be plenty of them a little higher up. If this wind would stiffen just enough more to blow away the people, so one could see this place, I believe it would be right decent looking.”
“See here,” whispered Elnora to Philip. “You must fix this with Billy. I can't have his trip spoiled.”
“Now, here is where I dust the rest of 'em!” complacently remarked Mrs. Comstock, as she climbed into the motor car for her first ride, in company with Philip and Little Brother. “I have been the one to trudge the roads and hop out of the way of these things for quite a spell.”
She sat very erect as the car rolled into the broad main avenue, where only stray couples were walking. Her eyes began to twinkle and gleam. Suddenly she leaned forward and touched the driver on the shoulder.
“Young man,” she said, “just you toot that horn suddenly and shave close enough a few of those people, so that I can see how I look when I leap for ragweed and snake fences.”
The amazed chauffeur glanced questioningly at Philip who slightly nodded. A second later there was a quick “honk!” and a swerve at a corner. A man engrossed in conversation grabbed the woman to whom he was talking and dashed for the safety of a lawn. The woman tripped in her skirts, and as she fell the man caught and dragged her. Both of them turned red faces to the car and berated the driver. Mrs. Comstock laughed in unrestrained enjoyment. Then she touched the chauffeur again.
“That's enough,” she said. “It seems a mite risky.” A minute later she added to Philip, “If only they had been carrying six pounds of butter and ten dozen eggs apiece, wouldn't that have been just perfect?”
Billy had wavered between Elnora and the motor, but his loyal little soul had been true to her, so the walk to the cottage began with him at her side. Long before they arrived the little O'Mores had crowded around and captured Billy, and he was giving them an expurgated version of Mrs. Comstock's tales of Big Foot and Adam Poe, boasting that Uncle Wesley had been in the camps of Me-shin-go-me-sia and knew Wa-ca-co-nah before he got religion and dressed like white men; while the mighty prowess of Snap as a woodchuck hunter was done full justice. When they reached the cottage Philip took Billy aside, showed him the emerald ring and gravely asked his permission to marry Elnora. Billy struggled to be just, but it was going hard with him, when Alice, who kept close enough to hear, intervened.
“Why don't you let them get married?” she asked. “You are much too small for her. You wait for me!”
Billy studied her intently. At last he turned to Ammon. “Aw, well! Go on, then!” he said gruffly. “I'll marry Alice!”
Alice reached her hand. “If you got that settled let's put on our Indian clothes, call the boys, and go to the playhouse.”
“I haven't got any Indian clothes,” said Billy ruefully.
“Yes, you have,” explained Alice. “Father bought you some coming from the dock. You can put them on in the playhouse. The boys do.”
Billy examined the playhouse with gleaming eyes.
Never had he encountered such possibilities. He could see a hundred amusing things to try, and he could not decide which to do first. The most immediate attraction seemed to be a dead pine, held perpendicularly by its fellows, while its bark had decayed and fallen, leaving a bare, smooth trunk.
“If we just had some grease that would make the dandiest pole to play Fourth of July with!” he shouted.
The children remembered the Fourth. It had been great fun.
“Butter is grease. There is plenty in the 'frigerator,” suggested Alice, speeding away.
Billy caught the cold roll and began to rub it against the tree excitedly.
“How are you going to get it greased to the top?” inquired Terry.
Billy's face lengthened. “That's so!” he said. “The thing is to begin at the top and grease down. I'll show you!”
Billy put the butter in his handkerchief and took the corners between his teeth. He climbed the pole, greasing it as he slid down.
“Now, I got to try first,” he said, “because I'm the biggest and so I have the best chance; only the one that goes first hasn't hardly any chance at all, because he has to wipe off the grease on himself, so the others can get up at last. See?”
“All right!” said Terry. “You go first and then I will and then Alice. Phew! It's slick. He'll never get up.”
Billy wrestled manfully, and when he was exhausted he boosted Terry, and then both of them helped Alice, to whom they awarded a prize of her own doll. As they rested Billy remembered.
“Do your folks keep cows?” he asked.
“No, we buy milk,” said Terry.
“Gee! Then what about the butter? Maybe your ma needs it for dinner!”
“No, she doesn't!” cried Alice. “There's stacks of it! I can have all the butter I want.”
“Well, I'm mighty glad of it!” said Billy. “I didn't just think. I'm afraid we've greased our clothes, too.”
“That's no difference,” said Terry. “We can play what we please in these things.”
“Well, we ought to be all dirty, and bloody, and have feathers on us to be real Indians,” said Billy.
Alice tried a handful of dirt on her sleeve and it streaked beautifully. Instantly all of them began smearing themselves.
“If we only had feathers,” lamented Billy.
Terry disappeared and shortly returned from the garage with a feather duster. Billy fell on it with a shriek. Around each one's head he firmly tied a twisted handkerchief, and stuck inside it a row of stiffly upstanding feathers.
“Now, if we just only had some pokeberries to paint us red, we'd be real, for sure enough Indians, and we could go on the warpath and fight all the other tribes and burn a lot of them at the stake.”
Alice sidled up to him. “Would huckleberries do?” she asked softly.
“Yes!” shouted Terry, wild with excitement. “Anything that's a colour.”
Alice made another trip to the refrigerator. Billy crushed the berries in his hands and smeared and streaked all their faces liberally.
“Now are we ready?” asked Alice.
Billy