"So it runned out of its little grassy place and went all round the
garden," said Priscilla, emerging suddenly in pink from under the
table.
"What are you playing at now, Priscilla?" I inquired.
"I'm a little pussy-cat."
"And what is this?" I asked, pointing to the waste-paper basket which
she had planted beside my chair.
"It's the pussy-cat's basket of milk. It's to drink when she's
firsty," she explained.
I sighed. It did not appear to me that the child's education was
proceeding upon proper lines. I had been reading portions of the diary
of Miss OPAL WHITELEY, written when she was seven years old, a work
which has just lifted for America the Child-authoress Cup. I had hoped
to find in Priscilla some faint signs that the laurels lost by Miss
DAISY ASHFORD might be wrested back. The latest feature in nursery
autobiography, so far as I could gather, was to have a profound
objective sympathy with vegetables and a faculty for naming domestic
animals after the principal figures in classical mythology. If you
have these gifts you get published by _The Atlantic Monthly_, with a
preface by Viscount GREY. But I doubted whether Priscilla had them. I
thought I would try.
"Priscilla," I said, "be a little girl again and tell me what flower
you like best."
"Woses."
"What do the roses say to each other when you aren't there?"
"Oh, they don't _say_ anyfing," she said with great contempt.
This was bad.
"Priscilla," I continued, "what do you call the dog next-door?"
"Bill," she said; "but it's runned away."
"There you are!" I exclaimed, turning to the child's mamma. "Bill,
indeed! If she were being properly educated she would be calling it
Jupiter Agamemnon Wilcox by now. Does she ever speak to you at all of
the star-gleams amongst the cabbage-leaves?"
"I don't think there are any star-gleams amongst the cabbages in this
garden," she replied. "Only slugs."
"I don't care," I said; "the fact remains that Priscilla ought to be
constantly wondering what the cabbages do say to each other when they
have lonesome feels at night."
"Priscilla," I began again, "in about three years you will be seven
years old and quite a big girl. What will you play at then?"
"Oh, I san't play at all," she said. "I sall go visiting and sopping."
"Anything else?"
"Oh, yes, I sall have a knife."
"A pocket-knife?"
"No, not a pocket-knife, a knife to cut meat wiv, of course."