do not mean to assert that Dick had been previously
eating grass. By no means. For several days
past he had been mentally subsisting on the remarkable
things that he heard and saw in the Pawnee village,
and wondering how he was to get away without being
scalped. He was now chewing the cud of this intellectual
fare. We therefore repeat emphatically--in case any
reader should have presumed to contradict us--that
Dick Varley sat before the fire
ruminating