Page:Peak and Prairie (1894).pdf/179

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

his return, confronting the horned monsters with unruffled tranquillity.

Acknowledging the presence of the cows only by a friendly "Shoo, there!" he established himself beside his waiting guest upon the settle, his long legs crossed, by way of a table.

"Can you draw?" he asked.

"No; I don't know my letters," she replied, with unconscious irrelevance.

"How would you like to have me learn you?"

"I'd like it."

"Well; I'll learn you O first. That's the first letter I learned;" and he made a phenomenally large and round O in the upper left-hand corner of the sheet. The paper, finding insufficient resting-place upon the bony knee, took occasion to flap idly in the gentle southerly breeze; upon which the child took hold of it with a quaint air of helpfulness which was singularly womanly.

"Now I've learned O," she remarked, "I'd like to learn another."

"Well, there's an I; see, there?"

"The other one looks more like an eye," she observed critically.

"So it does, so it does!" Amberley admitted,