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'Las
means breaking or finishing as well as ending, doesn't it?'

'So it does,' said Tegumai. 'To-las means that there's no water
in the tank for Mummy to cook with--just when I'm going hunting,
too.'

'And shi-las means that your spear is broken. If I'd only thought
of that instead of drawing silly beaver pictures for the
Stranger!'

'La! La! La!' said Tegumai, waiving his stick and frowning. 'Oh
bother!'

'I could have drawn shi quite easily,' Taffy went on. 'Then I'd
have drawn your spear all broken--this way!' And she drew. (14.)

'The very thing,' said Tegumai. 'That's la all over. It isn't
like any of the other marks either.' And he drew this. (15.)

'Now for ya. Oh, we've done that before. Now for maru.
Mum-mum-mum. Mum shuts one's mouth up, doesn't it? We'll draw a
shut mouth like this.' And he drew. (16.)

'Then the carp-mouth open. That makes Ma-ma-ma! But what about
this rrrrr-thing, Taffy?'

'It sounds all rough and edgy, like your shark-tooth saw when
you're cutting out a plank for the canoe,' said Taffy.

'You mean all sharp at the edges, like this?' said Tegumai. And
he drew. (17.)

''Xactly,' said Taffy. 'But we don't want all those teeth: only
put two.'

'I'll only put in one,' said Tegumai. 'If this game of ours is
going to be what I think it will, the easier we make our sound-
pictures the better for everybody.' And he drew. (18.)

'Now, we've got it,' said Tegumai, standing on one leg. 'I'll
draw 'em all in a string like fish.'

'Hadn't we better put a little bit of stick or something between
each word, so's they won't rub up against each other and jostle,
same as if they were carps?'

'Oh, I'll leave a space for that,' said her Daddy. And very
incitedly he drew them all without stopping, on a big new bit of
birch-bark. (19.)

'Shu-ya-las ya-maru,' said Taffy, reading it out sound by sound.


'That's enough for to-day,' said Tegumai. 'Besides, you're
getting tired, Taffy. Never mind, dear. We'll finish it all to-
morrow, and then we'll be remembered for years and years after
the biggest trees you can see are all chopped up for firewood.'

So they went home, and all that evening Tegumai sat on one side
of the fire and Taffy on the other, drawing ya's and yo's and
shu's and shi's in the smoke on the wall and giggling together
till her Mummy said, 'Really, Tegumai, you're worse than my
Taffy.'

'Please don't mind,' said Taffy. 'It's only our
secret-s'prise, Mummy dear, and we'll tell you all about it the
very minute it's done; but please don't ask me what it is now, or
else I'll have to tell.'

So her Mummy most carefully didn't; and bright and early next
morning Tegumai went down to the river to think about new sound
pictures, and when Taffy got up she saw Ya-las (water is ending
or running out) chalked on the side of the big stone water-tank,

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