The clear-cut way she talked English! And her great heart of motherhood! These were the two wonderful things in a tot so small. It was not difficult to see where she inherited the first. But how could so tiny a thing have such a great mother-heart? She loved everything little—everything just born on the place. The fact that anything in hair, hide or feathers had arrived was a cause of jollification. "O do let me see the dear little things!" would be her cry. And she generally saw them if Uncle Jack were around.
One day they missed her from the house and Uncle Jack quickly tracked her to the cow barn. It had occurred to him that the day before he had shown her the Short-Horn's latest edition, a big, double-jointed, ugly, hungry male calf, who slept all day in a bedded stall, a young Hercules in repose, and only waked up long enough to wrinkle his huge nose and sleep again.
There Uncle Jack found her. She had climbed over the high stall-gate to pet and coddle the great calf. She had placed her own beautiful string of beads around his tawny neck.
"Come out of there," laughed Uncle Jack. "What do you see pretty about that great ugly calf?"
"O Uncle Jack," and she sighed affectedly, "I am truly sorry for him. He is not pretty, to be sure—and so I have given him my beads. And he doesn't seem to be very bright, nor at all well mannered, poor dear—but—but," she added reflectively—"he has a lovely curly head and he seems to be such a healthy child!"
On another occasion they missed her. It was nearly night. Everybody started out in alarm to hunt for her. Aunt Lucretia was the first to find her, coming from the brood-sow's lot.
"Where in the world have you been, child?" she asked as she picked her up.
"Playing with the little yesterday-pigs," said Little Sister. "And Aunt Lucretia, I ought to have come home sooner, I know, but I kissed one of the cunningest of the little pigs good night, and all the others looked so hurt, and squealed so because I didn't kiss them too, I just had to catch and kiss every one before they would go to sleep."
Inheritance had played a tremendous part in Little Sister. Most children crow and lisp and talk in divers languages before they learn to talk English; while some never learn at all. But not so with her. The first long word she attempted was perfectly pronounced. The first sentence she put together was grammatically correct. The correctness of her language for one so small made it sound so quaint that Uncle Jack had her always talking. Her earnestness and intensity only added to her originality.
Pete was a little darky on the farm whose chief business was to entertain Little Sister when everything else failed. His repertoire consisted of all the funny tricks of a monkey. But his two-star performances were racking like Deacon Jones' old clay-bank pacer and playing 'possum. Little Sister never tired of having Pete do these two things. They were very comical. Everybody knew Deacon Jones, with his angular, sedate, solemn way of riding, and the double-shuffling, twisting, cork-screw gait of the old pacer. The ludicrous motions of the pacer had struck Pete early in life, and he had soon learned to get down on all-fours and make Deacon Jones's horse ashamed of himself. The imitation was so perfect that Ned and Uncle Jack used to call in their friends to see the show, which consisted of Pete's doing the racking act, while Little Sister, astraddle of his back, with one hand in his shirt collar, and the other wielding a hickory switch, played the Deacon.