Children's Book Classics - Kate Douglas Wiggin Edition: 11 Novels & 120+ Short Stories for Children. Kate Douglas Wiggin

rose again, undaunted. ‘I would respectfully ask the Chair, who put him in the chair, any way?’

      ‘Question!’ roared Philip.

      ‘Second the motion!’ shrieked Bell, that being the only parliamentary expression she knew.

      ‘Order!’ cried Geoffrey in stentorian accents. ‘I will adjourn the meeting and clear the court-room unless there is order.’

      ‘Do!’ remarked Polly, encouragingly. ‘I will rise again, like Phœbus, from my ashes, to say that—’

      Here Jack sprang to his feet. ‘I would suggest to the Chair that the last speaker amend her motion by substituting the word “Phœnix” for “Phœbus.”’

      ‘Accept the amendment,’ said Polly, serenely, amidst the general hilarity.

      ‘Question!’ called Bell, with another mighty projection of memory into a missionary meeting that she had once attended.

      ‘I am not aware that there is any motion before the house,’ said Geoffrey, cuttingly.

      ‘Second the motion!’

      ‘Second the amendment!’ shouted the girls.

      ‘Ladies, there is no motion. Will you oblige the Chair by remaining quiet until speech is requested?’

      ‘Move that the meeting be adjourned and another one called, with a new Chair!’ remarked Margery, who felt that the honour of her sex was at stake.

      ‘Move that this motion be so ordered and spread upon the minutes, and a copy of it be presented to the Chairman,’ suggested Philip.

      ‘Move that the copy be appropriately bound in calf,’ said Jack, dodging an imaginary blow.

      ‘Move that the other committees be elected by ballot,’ concluded Scott Burton.

      ‘This is simply disgraceful!’ exclaimed the Chair. ‘Order! order! I appoint Miss Oliver Committee on Entertainment, with a view of keeping her still.’

      This was received with particular as well as general satisfaction.

      ‘Miss Winship, we appoint you Committee on Music.’

      ‘All right. Do you wish it to be original?’

      ‘Certainly not; we wish it to be good.’

      ‘But we only know one chorus, and that’s “My Witching Dinah Snow.”’

      ‘Never mind; either write new words to that tune or sing tra-la-la to it. Mr. Richard Winship, the Chair appoints you Committee on Menagerie, and suggests that as we have proclaimed a legal holiday, you give your animals the freedom of the city.’

      ‘Don’t know what freedom of er city means,’ said Dicky, who feared that he was being made the butt of ridicule.

      ‘Why, we want you to allow the captives to parade in the evening, with torch-lights and mottoes.’

      ‘All right!’ cried Dicky, kindling in an instant; ‘’n’ Luby, ’n’ the doat, ’n’ my horn’ toads, all e’cept the one that just gotted away in Laura’s bed; but may be she’ll find him to-night, so they’ll be all there.’

      This was too much for the various committees, and Laura’s wild shriek was the signal for a hasty adjournment. A common danger restored peace to the assembly, and they sought the runaway in perfect harmony.

      ‘Well,’ said Jack, when quiet was restored, ‘I am going a little distance up the Pico Negro trail; there are some magnificent Spanish bayonets growing there, and if you’ll let me have Pancho, Uncle Doc, we can bring down four of them and lash them to each of the corners of Elsie’s tent,—they’ll keep fresh several days in water, you know.’

      ‘Take him, certainly,’ said Dr. Winship.

      ‘Do let me go with you!’ pleaded Laura, with enthusiasm. ‘I should like the walk so much.’

      ‘It’s pretty rough, Laura,’ objected Margery. ‘If you couldn’t endure our walk this morning, you would never get home alive from Pico Negro.’

      ‘Oh, that was in the heat of the day,’ she answered. ‘I feel equal to any amount of walking now, if Jack doesn’t mind taking me.’

      ‘Delighted, of course, Miss Laura. You’ll be willing to carry home one of the trees, I suppose, in return for the pleasure of my society?’

      ‘Snub him severely, Laura,’ cried Bell; ‘we never allow him to say such things unreproved.’

      ‘I think he is snubbed too much already,’ replied Laura, with a charming smile, ‘and I shall see how a course of encouragement will affect his behaviour.’

      ‘That will be what I long have sought,

       And mourned because I found it not,’

      sang Jack, nonchalantly.

      ‘Oh, Laura,’ remonstrated Bell, ‘think twice before you encourage him in his dreadful ways. We have studied him very carefully, and we know that the only way to live with him is to keep him in a sort of “pint pot” where we can hold the lid open just a little, and clap it down suddenly whenever he tries to spring out.’

      ‘Do not mind that young person, Miss Laura, but form your own impressions of my charming character. Excuse me, please, while I put on a celluloid collar, and make some few changes in my toilet necessary to a proper appearance in your distinguished company.’

      ‘I prefer you as you are,’ answered Laura, laughingly. ‘Let us start at once.’

      ‘Do you hear that, young person? She prefers me as I are! Now see what magic power her generosity has upon me!’ And he darted into the tent, from which he issued in a moment with his Derby hat, a manzanita cane, a pocket-handkerchief tied about his throat, and a flower pinned on his flannel camping-shirt—a most ridiculous figure, since nothing seems so out of place in the woods as any suggestion of city costumes or customs. Laura was in high good-humour, and looked exceedingly brilliant and pretty, as she always did when she was the central figure of any group or the bright particular star of any occasion.

      ‘Be home before dark,’ said Dr. Winship. ‘Pancho, keep a look-out for the pack-mule. Truth, one of the pack-mules has disappeared.’

      ‘So? Dumpling or Ditto?’

      ‘Ditto, curiously enough. His name should have led him not to set an example, but to follow one.’

      Elsie came.

      Perhaps you thought that this was going to be an exciting story, and that something would happen to keep her at the Tacitas ranch; but nothing did. Everything came to pass exactly as it was arranged, and Jack met his mother and sister at twelve o’clock some four miles from the camp, and escorted them to the gates.

      ‘Welcome’ had been painted on twenty different boards or bits of white cloth and paper, and nailed here and there on the trees that lined the rough wood-road; the strains of an orchestra, formed of a guitar, banjo, castanets, Chinese fiddle, and tin cans, greeted them from a distance, but were properly allowed to die away in silence when the guest neared the tents. Everything wore a new and smiling face, and Elsie never came more dangerously near being squeezed to death.

      Elsie, in the prettiest of gingham dresses, and her cloud of golden hair braided in two funny little pugs to keep it out of the dust; Elsie, with a wide hat that shaded her face, already a little tanned and burned, no longer colourless; Elsie, with no lines of pain in her pretty forehead, and the hollow ring gone from her voice; Elsie, who jumped over the wheel of the wagon, and hugged her huggers with the strength of a young bear! It was too good to believe, and nobody did quite believe it for days.

      At three o’clock the happiest party in the world assembled at the