ar talking about what we would
do when Blakie was gone. She went just after our dinner.

When we asked Denny what he would like to be in the play, it turned out
he had not read the stories Oswald told him at all, but only the "White
Seal" and "Rikki Tikki."

We then agreed to make the jungle first and dress up for our parts
afterwards. Oswald was a little uncomfortable about leaving the
strangers alone all the morning, so he said Denny should be his
aide-de-camp, and he was really quite useful. He is rather handy with
his fingers, and things that he does up do not come untied. Daisy might
have come too, but she wanted to go on reading, so we let her, which is
the truest manners to a visitor. Of course the shrubbery was to be the
jungle, and the lawn under the cedar a forest glade, and then we began
to collect the things. The cedar lawn is just nicely out of the way of
the windows. It was a jolly hot day--the kind of day when the sunshine
is white and the shadows are dark gray, not black like they are in the
evening.

We all thought of different things. Of course first we dressed up
pillows in the skins of beasts and set them about on the grass to look
as natural as we could. And then we got Pincher, and rubbed him all over
with powdered slate-pencil, to make him the right color for Gray
Brother. But he shook it all off, and it had taken an awful time to do.
Then Alice said:

"Oh, I know!" and she ran off to father's dressing-room, and came back
with the tube of _creme d'amande pour la barbe et les mains_, and we
squeezed it on Pincher and rubbed it in, and then the slate-pencil stuff
stuck all right, and he rolled in the dust-bin of his own accord, which
made him just the right color. He is a very clever dog, but soon after
he went off and we did not find him till quite late in the afternoon.
Denny helped with Pincher, and with the wild-beast skins, and when
Pincher was finished he said:

"Please, may I make some paper birds to put in the trees? I know how."

And of course we said "Yes," and he only had red ink and newspapers, and
quickly he made quite a lot of large paper birds with red tails. They
didn't look half bad on the edge of the shrubbery.

While he was doing this he suddenly said, or rather screamed, "Oh!"

And we looked, and it was a creature with great horns and a fur
rug--something like a bull and something like a minotaur--and I don't
wonder Denny was frightened. It was Alice, and it was first-cl