And pretty soon Swatty went on downtown. So she just stood there.
Well, me and Bony used to play with girls sometimes because they let us be the husbands and fathers, and boss them around and whip the children. So when we did Swatty used to come along. Mostly he would sit and whittle until me and Bony got through, but sometimes he would be the policeman to arrest the husbands when they got drunk, or a pirate, or an Indian lurking to scalp the wives, or a 'rangatang to carry the children off.
I guess the girls wished he wouldn't come, because a 'rangatang is such an interruption to plain housekeeping, and pirates and policemen are an awful nuisance to mothers who want to bring up a peaceful family and don't want their husbands taken to jail just when the mud pies are cooked and dinner is ready. But they couldn't help it, because if they didn't let him me and Bony would go where Swatty went.
Well, one time when teacher kept Swatty in school to have the principal lick him, she went out to get the principal and locked Swatty in the room, and he climbed out of the window onto a maple tree branch and got away. So the principal licked him the next day. Anyway, the trees darkened the room all up, so they had the janitor cut down the two trees and they fell down the bank back of the schoolhouse.
So that day the leaves were only beginning to wither, and the branches of the trees made a bully place to play in. So Mamie Little and my sister and me and Bony went right out there after dinner and played house; and when Swatty had been licked, or whatever he had been kept in for, he came there too. We made houses among the branches and leaves, and were fathers and mothers; and Swatty had a lair and was a 'rangatang, and hung by his knees and swang from branch to branch.
It was pretty good fun, even if it was playing with girls, because it was a jungle, and me and Bony hunted the wild 'rangatang between meals; and we were playing along all right when I saw my sister standing and looking. I guess you know how a girl stands and looks—the way a cow does—when she don't like something. So I looked, and out in the street was the girl in the red and black check woolen dress. She was just standing and looking back at my sister. It made my sister mighty mad. I guess girls can look the things boys generally holler at each other. So my sister said:
“Bony, I don't want that girl to look at me!”
So Bony looked, and when he saw who was looking he said:
“Aw! let her look! Let her look, if she wants to. She ain't hurting anybody!”
So then my sister got awful mad. She stamped her foot.