“A dogie,” the child repeated. “Dogies are a kind of animal I don’t know. Is it wild, or tame?”
Pearsall laughed.
“You was right in the first place, sister,” he said. “That pore little skeesicks is a calf. It lost its mother when it was too young to eat grass rightly; so it sort of starves along, and gets stunted and runted. We call ’em dogies. You’ll see one every once in a while, round over the range. They’re no good to nobody—nor to theirselves.”
“Oh,” said Hilda, under her breath.
A day or so later, finding her a bit drooping, Pearsall questioned:
“What’s the matter, sister? Is something worrying you?”
“Uncle Hank,” she explained, with some diffidence, “my heart is sad about dogies. I saw two of them to-day, and my heart is sad about them, ever since.”
(She had wanted to say, in the language of one of her favorite ballads, “My heart is wae”; but judged that that might be a little too much for her companion, and tried him with a simpler literary form.)
“Is it, honey?” inquired the old man, easily. “Oh, I guess I wouldn’t worry about ’em. Remember that we don’t ever butcher ’em, nor even brand ’em.”
“That’s part of the sadness,” Hilda maintained, shaking her head. “It’s just like I used to want to cry when I saw the little dwarfed people in the shows, that aren’t children, and never will be grown up.”