“I didn’t know you were so well up in history,” he said admiringly. “I reckon you’re ready at ciphering too?”
“How could I do my work without it?”
“Ah, that’s true. And a good hand at a pen, I suppose?”
“I can scratch what I want.”
“Ah!”
He fell silent.
“You don’t play the piano?” he asked after a pause.
“No,” said Jinny. “Only the horn.” And she blew gaily upon it: whereupon to her surprise and satisfaction—for she had forgotten him, and it was necessary to tie him up against the sheep—Nip appeared, tearing from the rear. Farmer Gale watched musingly the operation of confining him to his basket by one of those pieces of hoop-borne rope that had excited the speculation of Mr. Elijah Skindle.
“I suppose you could play a polka on it,” he remarked.
Jinny obliged with a few bars of the “Buy a Broom.”