“Far from it! How did you happen to select them? Do you know anything about either one?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “Not a thing, but I am rather interested in them and I thought the best way to learn about them would be to write about them, for then I’d have to find out something.”
“That is one way of looking at it, certainly rather an original one for a little girl. How do you happen to be interested in these two creatures?”
“Why, you know Neal Paine shot a lynx down by the woods back of the Paines’s house. I saw it.”
“Yes, I remember that he did and it made quite a stir in the neighborhood. Some persons thought it must have escaped from some travelling show and others said it probably made its way down from Canada, for they do not belong to these parts.”
“That’s what Betsy’s uncle said. He said they used to be in the wild forests, but that as the country was settled up they went further north, where it was not so civilized. He thought this one might have a mate. I shouldn’t like to meet it on a dark night, should you, mother?”
“I must say I should not. What do you know about the daddy-long-legs? It seems to me they are funny things for you to take an interest in. Most persons would be afraid of them.”
“I’m not afraid of anything but caterpillars and creepy things, wormy ones. Betsy and I had a pet daddy at her house. We used to feed it on gingerbread crumbs and it would let itself down in the middle and pick up the crumbs with its two forepaws.”
Mrs. Hollins laughed. “I didn’t know daddies had paws.”
“Well, whatever they are; those little short things like claws that they use to pick up things with.”