“Ain’t he a peach?” Pearlie said with pride.  “Some kids won’t show off worth a cent when ye want them to, but he’ll say ‘goo’ if you even nudge him.  His mother thinks ‘goo’ is awful childish, and she is at him all the time to say ‘Daddy-dinger,’ but he never lets on he hears her.  Say, doctor”—­Pearlie’s face was troubled—­“what do you think of his looks?  Just between ourselves.  Hasn’t he a fine little nub of a nose?  Do you see anything about him to make his mother cry?”

The doctor looked critically at the czar, who returned his gaze with stolid indifference.

“I never saw a more perfect nub on any nose,” he answered honestly.  “He’s a fine big boy, and his mother should be proud of him.”

“There now, what did I tell you!” Pearlie cried delightedly, nodding her head at an imaginary audience.

“That’s what I always say to his mother, but she’s so tuk up with pictures of pretty kids with big eyes and curly hair, she don’t seem to be able to get used to him.  She never says his nose is a pug, but she says it’s ‘different,’ and his voice is not what she wanted.  He cries lumpy, I know, but his goos are all right.  The kid in the book she is readin’ could say ‘Daddy-dinger’ before he was as old as the czar is, and it’s awful hard on her.  You see, he can’t pat-a-cake, or this-little-pig-went-to-market, or wave a bye-bye or nothin’.  I never told her what Danny could do when he was this age.  But I am workin’ hard to get him to say ‘Daddy-dinger.’  She has her heart set on that.  Well, I must go on now.”

The doctor lifted his hat, and the imperial carriage moved on.

She had gone a short distance when she remembered something: 

“I’ll let you know when he says it, doc!” she shouted.

“All right, don’t forget,” he smiled back.

When Pearlie turned the next corner she met Maudie Ducker.  Maudie Ducker had on a new plaid dress with velvet trimming, and Maudie knew it.

“Is that your Sunday dress,” she asked Pearl, looking critically at Pearlie’s faded little brown winsey.

“My, no!” Pearlie answered cheerfully.  “This is just my morning dress.  I wear my blue satting in the afternoon, and on Sundays, my purple velvet with the watter-plait, and basque-yoke of tartaric plaid, garnished with lace.  Yours is a nice little plain dress.  That stuff fades though; ma lined a quilt for the boys’ bed with it and it faded gray.”

Maudie Ducker was a “perfect little lady.”  Her mother often said so; Maudie could not bear to sit near a child in school who had on a dirty pinafore or ragged clothes, and the number of days that she could wear a pinafore without its showing one trace of stain was simply wonderful!  Maudie had two dolls which she never played with.  They were propped up against the legs of the parlour table.  Maudie could play the “Java March” and “Mary’s Pet Waltz” on the piano.  She always spoke in a hushed vox tremulo, and never played any rough games.  She could not bear to touch a baby, because it might put a sticky little finger on her pinafore.  All of which goes to show what a perfect little lady she was.