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 was glorious in a bright red blanket, carrying his little bow and arrow.
“I'm going to be the Injun chief,” he boasted.
“I'm going to be a Injun chief, too,” parroted Frances.
“Chief, nothing!” he sneered, “you all time trying to be a Injun chief. You 'bout the pompousest little girl they is. You can't be a chief nohow; you got to be a squash, Injun ladies 'r' name' squashes; me an' Billy's the chiefs. I'm name' old Setting Bull, hi'self.”
“You can't be named 'Bull,' Jimmy,” reproved Lina, “it isn't genteel to say 'bull' before people.”
“Yes, I am too,” he contended. “Setting Bull's the biggest chief they is and I'm going to be name' him.”
“Well, I am not going to play then,” said Lina primly, “my mother wants me to be genteel, and 'bull' is not genteel.”