“Let’s wun off to ze woods at wance,” echoed Babs.
Had little Eedie seen Ransey five minutes after this, I question whether she would have pronounced him the prettiest boy she had ever known.
Ransey was himself again, old shirt, ragged pants, and all.
I think that the children and Bob, not to mention the gallant Admiral, enjoyed themselves that afternoon in the woods as much as ever they had done in their young lives.
Babs insisted on taking her ragged old dolly-bone with her, and leaving the new one at home upside down in a corner.
Well, Ransey fished for just an hour, but had glorious luck and a good string to take to Mrs Farrow. This was enough, so he put away his rod, and read some more horrors to Babs from “Nick o’ the Woods.” The torture scenes and the scalping took her fancy more than anything else.
So Ransey Tansey invented a play on the spot that would have brought down the house in a twopenny theatre if properly put on the stage.
He, Ransey Tansey, was to be a wild Indian, Babs would be the white man, Bob the bear, and the Admiral the spirit of the wild woods and ghost of the haunted cañon.
The play passed off without a hitch. Only Ransey Tansey himself required to dress for his part. This he did to perfection. He retired to a secluded spot by the river’s bank for the purpose. He divested himself of his pants and his solitary suspender. These were but the evidences of an effete civilisation. What could such things as these have to do with the red man of the wild West, the solitary scalp-hunter of the boundless prairie? But a spear and a tomahawk he must have, and these were quickly and easily fashioned from the boughs of the neighbouring trees. He tied a piece of cord around his waist, and in this he stuck his knife, open and ready for every emergency. He fuzzed up his rebellious hair, and stuck rooks’ feathers in it; he thrust his feet into the darkest and grimiest of mud to represent moccasins, and streaked his face with the same.
When enveloped in his blanket (the big shawl) he stalked into the open in all the ghastliness of his wur-paint, and said “Ugh!” He was Ransey Tansey no longer, but Chee-tow, the Red Chief of the Slit-nosed Indians.