Page:Bill the minder.djvu/192

 'THE INTERVAL' butterflies, fishing in the pools, playing at Wild Indians, Hunt-the-Stag, Robbers and Thieves, Poor Jenny is a-weeping, Red Rover, and every really sensible game that there is to play, while Boadicea spent the time very happily in making beautiful bunches of wild flowers.

Chad, however, was a bit of a nuisance, crying all the morning because he was not allowed to eat toadstools; so to keep him out of mischief. Bill tied him to the highest branch of a very tall tree, and there left him to have his cry out.

The Long Man took Ptolemy Jenkinson in hand, and taught him how to bird-nest, at the same time adding to his own valuable collection of eggs. The Ancient Mariner made a swing for the Absent-minded Indian, and wondered, while he was swinging him to and fro, whether he enjoyed it or not, for the thoughtful creature's face still gave no sign at all of what was taking place in his mind, supposing he had one. The Doctor spent the day upside down, with his feet supported against the trunk of a tree and his nose on the ground, while he studied the habits of the stag-beetle. The Boy Scout practised scouting by continually losing his patron and then finding him again, while the Respectable Gentleman himself kept his respectability in hand by behaving most politely to all the trees of the forest,—raising his hat to the silver-birches, leaving his card on the ash-trees, introducing a hornbeam to a blackthorn, apologising to 140