"Well, don't load it."
"Only with powder to make a bang."
"I don't like the idea, my boy. Gun accidents often happen in play. You remember Jim Andrews——"
"Oh yes, mother, but that's different! It was loaded."
In the end, owing to the boy's importunity, Mrs. Blain reluctantly consented.
Early tea being duly dispatched, the boys made the necessary preparations for their dark deed. Joe produced a pair of knee-boots, the some time property of his father. He made them fit by sticking rags into the toes. He thrust his trousers' legs into the boot-tops, and wound a red scarf round his waist, through which he stuck a boomerang and nulla-nulla. A 'possum-skin cap adorned his head. His final act was to fasten on a corn-tassel moustache, and to strap his gun across his back. The broad effect of the costume was to make this youthful outlaw a cross, as it were, between Robinson Crusoe and a Greek brigand.
Indeed he quite terrified his two sisters, as he suddenly entered the sitting-room to the accompaniment of a blood-curdling yell. This the girls match with a shriek that wakes up the sleeping baby, bringing the mother in with a rush.
For a moment Mrs. Blain, seeing Joe in the half-light, thought some ruffian had entered.
"It's very thoughtless and wrong of you, Joe, to frighten your sisters. I—I—I'm quite angry with you——"
"Very sorry, mater," said Joe, with a serio-comic air. "I only meant to give them a start."