“Whoopity-la!” howled Joel, springing to his feet, followed by Davie and the Whitney boys, “this way;” and he put an imaginary gun to his shoulder, and took aim at a fanciful old woman in a brown cloak up in the sky. “Bang! bang! there you go, old woman, and your head’s off.”
“No; no, he didn’t say so,” cried Davie, running up to Joel; “the man with the big gun said he would shoot her head off if she came down, Joe.”
“I don’t care,” said Joel, banging away; “I’m going to shoot her, anyway; she’s a horrible old woman, and I sha’n’t let her come down. Bang! bang!”
“Well, that isn’t the way to do it,” said Van, twitching at the imaginary gun; “you don’t aim high enough.”
“And couldn’t the old woman ever come down, Polly?” asked Phronsie, a troubled look beginning to settle over her face.
“No, dear,” said Polly; “there she had to stay.”
“Not ever come down?” persisted Phronsie.
“No; that is,” as she looked at Phronsie’s face, “I guess the man with the big gun would let her come down once in a while; and then Araminta Sophia could stay in the perfectly funny little house and shut the door, you know, so the old woman couldn’t let any more birds get in her hair. And then back she would have to fly up into the sky again,—the old woman with the brown cloak, I mean,—for the man with the big gun said if she didn’t he should know it, and he would come and shoot her head off.”