"Why?" Pearl asked in wonder.
"Oh, by Jove! You see it is not a woman's place to work outside like this, don't you know."
"That's because ye'r English," Pearl said, a sudden light breaking in on her. "Ma says when ye git a nice Englishman there's nothing nicer, and pa knowed one once that was so polite he used to say 'Haw Buck' to the ox and then he'd say, 'Oh, I beg yer pardon, I mean gee.' It wasn't you, was it?"
"No," he said smiling, "I have never driven oxen, but I have done a great many ridiculous things I am sure."
"So have I," Pearl said confidentially, as she sat down on a little three-legged stool to milk So-Bossie. "You know them fluffy white things all made of lace and truck like that, that is hung over the beds in rich people's houses, over the pillows, I mean?"
"Pillow-shams?" he asked.
"Yes, that's them! Well, when I stayed with Camilla one night at Mrs. Francis's didn't I think they were things to pull down to keep the flies off ye'r face. Say, you should have heard Camilla laugh, and ma saw a girl at a picnic once who drank lemonade through her veil, and she et a banana, skin and all."
Pearl laughed heartily, but the Englishman only smiled faintly. Canadian ways were growing stranger all the time.
"Say," Pearl began after a pause, "who does the cow over there with the horns bent down look like? Someone we both know, only the cow looks pleasanter."
"My word!" the Englishman exclaimed, "you're a rum one."