Tom gave a sort of mournful growl.
“Oh, cut it out, Billy!” he said. “If you really want that soda, here’s a drug-store.”
“A striking head,” mused his sister, cocking her own head on one side, to look at Tom from this new point of view. “I really think you have.”
“If ever I meet the fellow who said that, he’ll find out I have a striking fist,” muttered Thomas darkly, walking into the drug-store ahead of the rest, and sitting down at a table in the back. “Four walnut sundaes, please. No, I don’t want ’em all myself. The others are coming in the door now.”
For the next few days Winona, at a point half-way between her camp and the Scout’s camp, worked steadily over the paper lanterns she had bought. She covered them all with white paper, and cut out holes in the paper after the fashion of eyes, nose and mouth, until, if you were not too critical, they looked like big oval skulls. If you were critical, they might remind you, it is true, of jack-o’-lanterns, but nobody was unkind enough to say so but Tom. There were forty of them altogether, and when they were all covered, and brought down to camp out of the danger of being rained on, and festooned about Winona’s tent, the effect was truly awful. Tom, who had been watching his sister’s performance with interest, came over one day with five little paper-mache lanterns which he presented to her, two in the shape of black cats, and three like owls.
“I don’t know yet what you’re going to do,” he said, “but if Bill’s going to wear horns and hoofs, and those things over the cot are meant for skulls, I should think these would come in handy.”
“They’re just exactly what I wanted!” said Winona with rapture, hanging them with the rest. “Now I’ve nothing to do but my dress.”
She showed him several yards of black paper muslin and a sheet of gilt paper. “It doesn’t look promising, I know,” she said, “but it will be quite nice, I think, when it’s done.”
And it really was. Helen helped her to fit it, and they made it with the dull side out, close-fitting, and covered with the stars and crescents of the traditional witch-dress. She was done with it, even to the pointed hat and black half-mask, in very good time.
“Now,” she said to the boys, standing over Billy’s canoe where it had been pulled up in the grass, “now comes the tug of war. Tom, you said you would help me.”