Part 2 — AN EVENING GAME
Reading edition
Sometimes Louis visited his grandfather.
His grandfather and an aunt lived in the country.
Louis was very fond of them and they were very kind to the little boy.
His grandfather showed him how to play with his toy soldiers.
His aunt told him stories and bought many story-books for him.
At evening the family sat in a large room.
The grown-up people sat around the fire and talked or sang.
In the room was a large sofa.
In the daytime Louis read his story-books on it.
At night he played his stories behind it.
The sofa had a high back.
Back of it there were always dark shadows.
Taking his little gun, Louis would crawl along the wall to the place back of the sofa.
He called this place the forest.
There he would play the stories he had read in his book.
Sometimes he played he was a hunter.
He would lie quiet as a mouse looking right before him.
He was waiting for the roaring lions to come down to the river to drink.
I suppose he played he shot many lions and other wild animals in his own play-forest.
Sometimes he played he had a hunter’s camp behind the sofa.
No one could see him as he lay and looked up at the moon.
The lamp was his moon.
Again, he played that the grown-up people were white men in camp.
The fire was their camp-fire.
They were sitting around it laughing and talking.
They would not have laughed so loudly had they known Indians were near.
Yes, Louis was a wild Indian.
He crept softly around the white men’s camp.
Had he been a real Indian, and his gun a real gun, how easily he might have shot them all!
So all evening, without any other child to play with him, Louis played the stories he knew and loved.
When it was bedtime his nurse came for him.
How hard it must have been for Louis to forget that he was no longer a brave hunter, or an Indian scout!
How hard it must have been to remember he was a little boy once more!
Instead of shooting the white men in their camp, he had to kiss them and say, “Good-night.”
Then he took his nurse’s hand and went upstairs.
I think as he was getting ready for bed he told his nurse all about his play.
“O Nursie! I’ve had such fun to-night.
I was an Indian.
With my little gun I crawled to an encampment of white people.”
“Did you shoot anyone, laddie?”
“No, Nursie, just as I got near, you called and I changed from an Indian into your little laddie.”
Do you not think Louis knew how to play well?
Do you ever play stories you have read?
Try it sometime; it is great fun.
