'And drill is over for the day,' went on Baby Jane. 'This afternoon my army shall sit down and keep cool and see a military tournament.'
As to the beginning of this tournament there was a good deal of puzzling and trouble, for the army sent a solemn deputation, headed by Miss Crocodile and Mary Carmichael, to Baby Jane during dinner to pray that proceedings might open with a war-dance.
Now Baby Jane had not the least idea how a war-dance went, and, after a long consultation with Sammy, she had to tell the deputation so.
'Do you know how it goes yourselves?' she asked.
Miss Crocodile said the niggers always did it before they went out collecting missionaries. You jumped up and down and waved sticks and shouted. Here Miss Crocodile made a few shy steps to illustrate her meaning.
'Of course,' said Baby Jane, upon whom a light had dawned. 'An Irish jig! The very thing! I danced it in a play once, and I will show you. Come along. What fun!'
It required but little practice, and, with two pretty hoods for the ladies and a couple of sprigs of blackthorn for the gentlemen, they were presently equipped and ready to dance before the army, which was now spread out in a huge semicircle facing the open desert and the distant Black Mountains. And they might have stepped straight from the fair at Coleraine, for the Lion looked the broth of a boy, and even the Bear threw off his Scottish manner and was for the time a roaring blade; while as for Mary and Miss Crocodile, no saucier colleens ever peeped from beneath a hood.
Baby Jane, flushed and smiling, holding a bit or frock in each hand, led them into the middle.
'Now,' she whispered over her shoulder, 'one—two—three—whistle!'
Then to the romping air of 'St. Patrick's Day in the Morning' five light figures tripped it gaily up and down, every footfall pat to a note. Now, with a bang and a yell, dancing defiance at one another, the boys met in the middle, each with his lady under his lee. Then, shooting roguish glances right and left, Miss Crocodile and Mary, hand-in-hand, would trip between the warlike ones and take the floor. And the army marked time with whoops that must have echoed in the distant mountains.