“‘God bless the little angel-faced creetur,’ she said. ‘She reminds me of me own mother in glory—well, good-bye to ye, me lady, an’ good luck to the bird. I must hurry home an’ make a toothsome dish for me old man’s dinner, for it’s bound to please him, I am, since he gave up his beasts to please me.’
“When she left, the floor-walker gently urged the other women to pass on and let Mrs. Martin finish her shopping, so she put Sister Susie
in the bag she so loved to travel in and went on with her purchases.”
“Some animals have a dreadful time when they travel,” said Billie. “When Missie brought me from New York I heard some cattle talking on the train. One handsome black and white mother cow was saying, ‘My blood runs like poison in my veins, for I have been three days without food or water. If human beings wanted to kill me, why did they not do it away back in Chicago, where I was taken from my baby calf? I pity the human being that eats me! Another bad, black cow said, ‘My tongue is dry and I have lost so much blood by getting bruised and torn in this crowded cattle car that I hope the persons who eat me will die.’”
“If human beings could listen to animals talking,” I said, “they would get some hints.”
“Mrs. Martin understands,” said Billie. “She told me that when our train was standing in the station in Albany the waiter in the dining car brought her two mutton chops. Just as she was going to eat them she looked out the car window, and there out on the platform in a
crate were two sheep. Fancy, Dicky-Dick—two sheep from a western plain in a case half boarded up in a rushing railway station. Mrs. Martin says they looked at her with their suffering eyes. They never stirred—just showed their agony by their glances, and she pushed away her plate and said to the waiter, ‘Oh, take it away.’”
“Dear Missie,” said Billie affectionately, “she hates to see anything suffer. She saw a poor old horse fall down here in the street to-day, and she went out and gave the owner money enough to take him to the Rest Home for horses.”
“What is that?” I said curiously. “I have not heard about it.”
“I heard the milkman’s horse talking to the grocer’s horse about it two days ago,” said Billie. “It has just been started, and it is a big farm outside the city. The milkman’s horse said to the other horse, ‘You ought to go out there, Tom. Your hoofs are in bad shape, and that moist land down by the creek on the Rest Farm would set you up again finely. Then you could lie down in the shade of the tall trees,