“Then how came you here?” asked Ethel.
“How came we here? How came we here? Why those screams went beyond Mount Nebo. You’ll see people pouring over the edge of it in a few minutes. Such shrieks I never heard outside of a mad house. I thought it was Indians.”
Minerva’s agitation had now taken the form of sobbing, and as she mopped her face with her apron it began to dawn upon her that she had not been in danger until she took to the tree. She helped herself to a handful of berries, and they seemed to do her good, for she listened to Ethel’s account of what had happened and punctuated it with what at first were chuckles, and when the humour of the thing had soaked in far enough were her irresistible guffaws, so provocative of laughter in others.
“We were picking berries and enjoying ourselves very much when I heard a rustling and looked up, and there was a cow. I said rather hastily, ‘Oh, look,’ and Minerva looked and screamed out, ‘It’s a bear,’ and before I could tell her what it was she had gone up that tree as if she had lived in the country all her life. She begged of me to come up with her, but I got over my fear of cows some time ago.” This with a conscious blush, for Ethel knew that in times past she, too, had fled from a cow.
I turned to Minerva. “Do you mean to tell me that you never saw a cow before? There are cows in the city.”
“I never saw one.”
“Haven’t you seen pictures of them on groceries?”
“I spec I have, but comin’ thataway at me it looked like a bear.”
“Very like a bear,” said I. “Well, it’s lucky you weren’t hurt. You can thank the cow that you didn’t break your back. I hope you didn’t break hers.”
She went off into yells of laughter at this mild bit of humour, and cheerfulness now being restored, I thanked Bert for giving me a lift and told him I didn’t care to go any farther.