“And he went and milkted the Cow!” Bruno put in.
“Yes,” said Sylvie, meekly accepting the new verb. “And the Cow said ‘Moo! What are you going to do with all that Milk?’ And Bruno said ‘Please’m, I want it for my Picnic.’ And the Cow said ‘Moo! But I hope you wo’n’t boil any of it?’ And Bruno said ‘No, indeed I won’t! New Milk’s so nice and so warm, it wants no boiling!’”
“It doesn’t want no boiling,” Bruno offered as an amended version.
“So Bruno put the Milk in a bottle. And then Bruno said ‘Now I want some Bread!’ So he went to the Oven, and he took out a delicious new Loaf. And the Oven——”
“—ever so light and so puffy!” Bruno impatiently corrected her. “Oo shouldn’t leave out so many words!”
Sylvie humbly apologised. “—a delicious new Loaf, ever so light and so puffy. And the Oven said——” Here Sylvie made a long pause. “Really I don’t know what an Oven begins with, when it wants to speak!”
Both children looked appealingly at me; but I could only say, helplessly, “I haven’t the least idea! I never heard an Oven speak!”
For a minute or two we all sat silent; and then Bruno said, very softly, “Oven begins wiz ‘O’.”
“Good little boy!” Sylvie exclaimed. “He does his spelling very nicely. He’s cleverer than he knows!” she added, aside, to me. “So the Oven said ‘O! What are you going to do with all that Bread?’ And Bruno said ‘Please——’ Is an Oven ‘Sir’ or ‘’m,’ would you say?” She looked to me for a reply.
“Both, I think,” seemed to me the safest thing to say.