“Now I’ll begin, then,” she said. “Thank you for making the foundation.”
She took up the copper wire again, and strung more lines of it from end to end of the canoe, and one around the gunwale. She laced still more up and down in irregular points, up and down the side-wires, till the effect was that of an irregularly pointed fence, or crown, as high as the end pieces in some parts, and low enough, at the ends, to show the people seated in it.
“Looks like a cross-section of Alps,” said Tom critically. “Are you going to be the Blue Alsatian Mountains?”
“There are two classes of people who should never see a thing half-done,” answered his sister, standing off again to get the effect.
“Thank you,” said Tom.
“Doesn’t it look like anything else at all?” she asked, abandoning her superior attitude, and throwing herself on his mercy.
“Well, something like a fever-chart,” said he.
Winona said no more—there didn’t seem to be any use. She picked up her ball of red tinsel, and began to wind it around and within, and across, every point of the “fever-chart,” till there was a solid network. It was not a bad imitation of a springing fire.
“Now do you see?” she said. “That’s a big, red blaze coming out of the canoe, and when we’ve lighted the Greek fire inside it ought to look real enough to burn you.”
“Not bad,” admitted Tom. “But I don’t see its connection with a black bonnet and forty jack-o’-lanterns.”