Page:Chetyates00yateiala.pdf/287

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

just like the banks of the ravine, with trees and boulders, exactly as they have been for hundreds of years,—and that's how Mabelle got a joke on me the next morning. We were up early, and while we were waiting for breakfast, she and I went out and sat on the side fence, in our Jap kimonos, and listened to the birds and looked off down the hill, with Son Riley standing up tall, and nibbling at our toes.

"Presently I saw a big gray boulder, about a hundred feet down the hill. 'Look,' I said, pointing at it, 'Is that a meteor?'

"'No, Elizabeth,' said Mabelle, sweetly, 'that isn't a meteor, that's a cow!'

"And then she shrieked so loud that the cow got up and looked at us. You see, it was a black and gray speckled cow, and she was lying down, with her head around to one side, where it didn't show, so that she looked exactly like a great gray rock;—and now they all say that I will never make either a farmer or an astronomer, if I can't tell a cow froma meteor. Mr. Kirby took me out after breakfast, and went to a lot of trouble to explain to me the difference; and pointed out that meteors didn't have horns, nor tassels on their