Peak and Prairie: From a Colorado Sketch-bookFuller, Anna
General
Peak and Prairie: From a Colorado Sketch-book
Fuller, Anna
Colorado -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Frontier and pioneer life -- Fiction
"Same's the calf," she commented. "Was either of you named for the
other?"
"Yes; the calf was."
"I was named for my sainted grandmother. Bella Jones says Eliza's an
ugly name, but Ma says if 't was good enough for my sainted grandmother
it's good enough for me."
"_I_ think Eliza's a real pretty name," Amberley declared in a tone of
conviction, as he warded off the renewed advances of Simon. "If ever I
have another calf I shall call it Eliza."
"I like both the Simons," Eliza announced, with flattering openness.
To such a declaration as this, modesty forbade any reply, and the two
went on in silence to the cabin door, closely followed by the
white-nosed gourmand.
Outside the lean-to was a bench, roughly modelled on Amberley's
recollection of the settle outside his mother's kitchen door.
"You'd better set there, Eliza," he said; "It's prettier outside than
in;" and he lifted her to the seat, and left her there, with her fat
little legs sticking straight out in front of her.
She seemed to take very naturally to the situation, and indeed her
small, sturdy person looked as much a part of the homely scene as the
stubby little daisy she held in her hand. As she sat there in the
sunshine, placid and self-contained, a mysterious trampling and
crackling began among the trees close at hand, and one after another,
three solemn-eyed cows emerged into the clearing and fixed a wondering
gaze upon the little visitor. She, nothing daunted, calmly returned
their gaze, only holding the daisy a little more tightly, lest one of
the new-comers should take it into her head to dispute the prize; and
Simon found her, upon 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, much impressed by the
discovery. "But then it's an _O_ all the same, and this one is an _I_."
"Yes; well, I've learned that. Now, make another."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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