Inheritance had played a tremendous part in Little Sister. Most children crow and lisp and talk in divers languages before they learn to talk English; while some never learn at all. But not so with her. The first long word she attempted was perfectly pronounced. The first sentence she put together was grammatically correct. The correctness of her language for one so small made it sound so quaint that Uncle Jack had her always talking. Her earnestness and intensity only added to her originality. Pete was a little darky on the farm whose chief business was to entertain Little Sister when everything else failed. His repertoire consisted of all the funny tricks of a monkey. But his two-star performances were racking like Deacon Jones’ old clay-bank pacer and playing ’possum. Little Sister never tired of having Pete do these two things. They were very comical. Everybody knew Deacon Jones, with his angular, sedate, solemn way of riding, and the double-shuffling, twisting, cork-screw gait of the old pacer. The ludicrous motions of the pacer had struck Pete early in life, and he had soon learned to get down on all-fours and make Deacon Jones’s horse ashamed of himself. The imitation was so perfect that Ned and Uncle Jack used to call in their friends to see the show, which consisted of Pete’s doing the racking act, while Little Sister, astraddle of his back, with one hand in his shirt collar, and the other wielding a hickory switch, played the Deacon. One evening, before company, Pete had paced around so many times that he was leg-weary. Little Sister, astride his back, whacked him in the flanks vigorously and exclaimed: "Come, pace along there, damn you, or I’ll put a head on you!" The company nearly fell out of their chairs, while Thesis blushed and Ned stammered an apology. Then he remembered that only a few days before he had heard his grandsire, the swearing old Indian Fighter, make the same remark to Pete for being slow about bringing his shaving water; and he knew that if Little Sister was proud of anyone, it was of her great grandsire, who fought valiantly with "Stonewall" in the Valley. Ned and Thesis gave the old gentleman a talk, and begged him to be careful of his oaths in the presence of Little Sister: but when he had heard it, he laughed more than he had laughed for a year, and straightway proceeded to buy her a doll that cost a gold eagle, and was as large, and nearly as beautiful, as Little Sister herself.