As she searched the southern sky to find the constellation, she was singing Uncle Henry’s verses about the archer and Scorpio over and over, to a tune of her own improvising.
The boys had made bows and arrows from green saplings during the morning and had raced about for some time with “Rags,” in search of giant scorpions to shoot at. They discovered them in the most unexpected objects—trees, rocks, and even boats. The hunt had been accompanied by a war chant, with the scorpion verses for words. It was a faint echo of this that Betty was crooning to herself now.
As Uncle Henry approached her she looked up at him and said,
“Aren’t there any ladies among the star people, Uncle Henry? You told about the lyre that they play on, but you haven’t shown any of them to us.”
“Well, Betty,” said Uncle Henry, sitting down beside her, “there are several ladies in our star country, but only two of them are in our sight in the summer time. Let’s get the boys and we’ll find both the ladies and take a vote to decide which of them shall have your lyre-ukelele to play on.”
Betty called, in her high little voice, for Peter and Paul to hurry, and they raced down from the porch with “Rags” in tow.
“Uncle Hen,” asked Peter, “‘Rags’ wants to know if there aren’t any more dogs in the sky?” “Sure,” said Uncle Henry, “sky folks are very fond of dogs. We’ve found the two that belong to the herdsman. Besides them, there are two others, but we can’t see them ’til next winter. And, of course, there’s Cerberus, the ugly, monstrous three-headed dog that Hercules killed. We’ll find him to-night.”
“Oh, that’s great!” said Peter, and he and Paul settled down with “Rags” between them. “Rags” looked expectantly at Uncle Henry, who said,
“But first I’ve promised Betty to find the sky ladies that we can see now, and let one of them have the ukelele.”
“Rags’” ears dropped and he lost interest. Peter and Paul, however, remembering Betty’s temper of the previous evening, said,