d have made them consent to go.

The children promised at least a dozen things. They would keep away from
the barn, the live stock, the railroad, the ponds, and the cisterns.
They would not ride their wheels, climb trees, nor go off the Maclntyre
premises, and they would keep a sharp lookout for snakes and poison
ivy, in case they went into the woods for wild flowers.

[Illustration: VIRGINIA AND THE CALF.]

"Seems to me there's mighty little left that a fellow can do," said
Keith, when the long list was completed.

"Oh, the time will soon pass," said his grandmother, who was preparing
to take the eleven o'clock train. "It will soon be lunch-time. Then this
is the day for you each to write your weekly letters to your mother, and
it is so pretty in the woods now that I am sure you will enjoy looking
for violets."

Time did pass quickly, as their grandmother had said it would, until the
middle of the afternoon. Then Virginia began to wish for something more
amusing than the quiet guessing games they had been playing in the
library. The boys each picked up a book, and she strolled off up-stairs,
in search of a livelier occupation.

In a few minutes she came down, looking like a second Pocahontas in her
Indian suit, with her bow and arrows slung over her shoulder.

"I am going down to the woods to practise shooting," she announced, as
she stopped to look in at the door.

"Oh, wait just a minute!" begged Malcolm, throwing down his book.
"Let's all play Indian this afternoon. We'll rig up, too, and build a
wigwam down by the spring rock, and make a fire,--grandmother didn't say
we couldn't make a fire; that's about the only thing she forgot to tell
us not to do."

"You can come on when you get ready," answered Virginia. "I'm going now,
because it is getting late, but you'll find me near the spring when you
come. Just yell."

The boys could not hope to rival Virginia's Indian costume, but no
wilder-looking little savages ever uttered a war-whoop than the two
which presently dashed into the still April woods.

Malcolm had ripped some variegated fringe from a table-cover to pin down
the sides of his leather leggins. He had borrowed a Roman blanket from
Aunt Allison's couch to pin around his shoulders, and emptied several
tubes of her most expensive paints to streak his face with hideous
stripes and daubs. A row of feathers from the dust-brush was fastened
around his forehead by a broad band, and a hatchet from the w