e and Billy is the chiefs," he shouted, capering
around, "and you and Frances is the squashes and got to have papooses
strop' to your back."

"Bennie Dick can be a papoose," suggested Billy.

"I'm not going to be a Injun squash if I got to have a nigger papoose
strapped to my back!" cried an indignant Frances. "You can strap him to
your own back, Billy."

"But I ain't no squash," objected that little Indian.

"We can have our dolls for papooses," said Lina, going to the swing
where the dolls had been left. Billy pulled a piece of string from his
pocket and the babies were safely strapped to their mothers' backs. With
stately tread, headed by Sitting Steer, the children marched back and
forth across the lawn in Indian file.

So absorbed were they in playing Indian that they forgot the flight of
time until their chief suddenly stopped, all his brave valor gone as he
pointed with trembling finger up the street.

That part of the Ladies' Aid Society which lived in West Covington was
bearing down upon them.

"Yonder's our mamas and Miss Minerva," he whispered. "Now look what a
mess Billy's done got us in; he all time got to perpose someping to get
chillens in trouble and he all time got to let grown folks ketch em."

"Aren't you ashamed to tell such a story, Jimmy Garner?" cried
Frances. "Billy didn't propose any such thing. Come on, let's run," she
suggested.

"'Tain't no use to run," advised Jimmy. "They're too close and done
already see us. We boun' to get what's coming to us anyway, so you might
jus' as well make 'em think you ain't 'fraid of 'em. Grown folks got to
all time think little boys and girls 'r' skeered of 'em, anyhow."

"Aunt Minerva'll sho' put me to bed this time," said Billy. "Look like
ev'y day I gotter go to bed."

"Mother will make me study the catechism all day to-morrow," said Lina
dismally.

"Mama'll lock me up in the little closet under the stairway," said
Frances.

"My mama'll gimme 'bout a million licks and try to take all the hide off
o' me," said Jimmy; "but we done had a heap of fun."

It was some hours later. Billy's aunt had ruthlessly clipped the turkey
feathers from his head, taking the hair off in great patches. She had
then boiled his scalp, so the little boy thought, in her efforts to
remove the mucilage. Now, shorn of his locks and of some of his courage,
the child was sitting quietly by her side, listening to a superior
moral lecture and indulging in a compulsory hear