"It's the pussy-cat's basket of milk. It's to drink when she's firsty," she explained.
I sighed. It did not appear to me that the child's education was proceeding upon proper lines. I had been reading portions of the diary of Miss Opal Whiteley, written when she was seven years old, a work which has just lifted for America the Child-authoress Cup. I had hoped to find in Priscilla some faint signs that the laurels lost by Miss Daisy Ashford might be wrested back. The latest feature in nursery autobiography, so far as I could gather, was to have a profound objective sympathy with vegetables and a faculty for naming domestic animals after the principal figures in classical mythology. If you have these gifts you get published by The Atlantic Monthly, with a preface by Viscount Grey. But I doubted whether Priscilla had them. I thought I would try.
"Priscilla," I said, "be a little girl again and tell me what flower you like best."
"Woses."
"What do the roses say to each other when you aren't there?"
"Oh, they don't say anyfing," she said with great contempt.
This was bad.
"Priscilla," I continued, "what do you call the dog next-door?"
"Bill," she said; "but it's runned away."
"There you are!" I exclaimed, turning to the child's mamma. "Bill, indeed! If she were being properly educated she would be calling it Jupiter Agamemnon Wilcox by now. Does she ever speak to you at all of the star-gleams amongst the cabbage-leaves?"