“So have I,” Pearl said confidentially, as she sat down on a little three-legged stool to milk So-Bossie.  “You know them fluffy white things all made of lace and truck like that, that is hung over the beds in rich people’s houses, over the pillows, I mean?”

“Pillow-shams?” he asked.

“Yes, that’s them!  Well, when I stayed with Camilla one night at Mrs. Francis’s didn’t I think they were things to pull down to keep the flies off ye’r face.  Say, you should have heard Camilla laugh, and ma saw a girl at a picnic once who drank lemonade through her veil, and she et a banana, skin and all.”

Pearl laughed heartily, but the Englishman only smiled faintly.  Canadian ways were growing stranger all the time.

“Say,” Pearl began after a pause, “who does the cow over there with the horns bent down look like?  Someone we both know, only the cow looks pleasanter.”

“My word!” the Englishman exclaimed, “you’re a rum one.”

Pearl looked disappointed.

“Animals often look like people,” she said.  “We have two cows at home, one looks like Mrs. White, so good and gentle, wouldn’t say boo to a goose; the other one looks just like Fred Miller.  He works in the mill, and his hair goes in a roll on the top; his mother did it that way with a hair-pin too long, I guess, and now it won’t go any other way, and I know an animal that looks like you; he’s a dandy, too, you bet.  It is White’s dog, and he can jump the fence easy as anything.”

“Oh, give over, give over!” the Englishman said stiffly.

Pearl laughed delightedly.

“It’s lots of fun guessing who people are like,” she said.  “I’m awful smart at it and so is Mary, four years younger’n me.  Once we could not guess who Mrs. Francis was like, and Mary guessed it.  Mrs. Francis looks like prayer—­big bug eyes lookin’ away into nothin’, but hopin’ it’s all for the best.  Do you pray?”

“I am a rector’s son,” he answered.

“Oh, I know, minister’s son, isn’t that lovely?  I bet you know prayers and prayers.  But it isn’t fair to pray in a race is it?  When Jimmy Moore and my brother Jimmy ran under twelve, Jimmie Moore prayed, and some say got his father to pray, too; he’s the Methodist minister, you know, and, of course, he won it; but our Jimmy could ha’ beat him easy in a fair race, and no favours; but he’s an awful snoopie kid and prays about everything.  Do you sing?”

“I do—­a little,” the Englishman said modestly.

“Oh, my, I am glad,” Pearl cried rapturously.  “When I was two years old I could sing ‘Hush my babe lie,’ all through—­I love singin’—­I can sing a little, too, but I don’t care much for my own.  Have they got an organ here?”

“I don’t know,” he answered, “I’ve only been in the kitchen.”

“Say, I’d like to see a melodeon.  Just the very name of it makes me think of lovely sounds, religious sounds, mountin’ higher and higher and swellin’ out grander and grander, rollin’ right into the great white throne, and shakin’ the streets of gold.  Do you know the ‘Holy City,’” she asked after a pause.