"Let's us play like . . ."

There were a few toys in the Orbit household, if they could ever be found, but none of them were recalled to be in very good shape. Nobody had seen any of them for a long time. For Christmas they had received not much more than the Ecklund sisters. Toys, however, did not much signify, and well equipped with next to nothing but far-reaching imagination they began to play.
     As the steam runs the steamboat and folly runs the perpetual motion machine, a bubbling song runs the game of pretending. It starts Let's us play like and ripples anywhere.

     We're rich!
     I'm the Papa, you're the Mamma!
     Here's our house!
     Here's our back yard!
     Lookut us!
     I'm a old lady thirty-six years old!
     You're a old man with whiskers clear down to here!
     I got a silk dress hiked up in the back!
     Here's our kids!
     Johnny! Bessie! Mary! Nephi! Pearl!
     Here's our table!
     Here's our house, our boat, our sleigh, our wagon!
     Lookut our things!
     We found a sack of diamonds lost downtown!
     Lost!
     Wouldn't give um back!
     Kept um!
     Lookut us!

It flows and meanders anywhere, any tiger, any crown, any sharpshooting gun, any necklace, any blue satin, any France, any scope, any face, has only to be reached out for and plucked as it grows down-hanging and full of flowers, its leaves in the water. . . .

     --From The Peaceable Kingdom