“No, sir, they didn’t chase me; but I suppose it was because feed was uncommonly good,” replied Whistler.
“Pretty fair,” said his father, who always relished a joke.
“Do cows ever eat boys, father?” inquired Ettie, who had soberly listened to the conversation, but apparently without fully comprehending the drift of it.
This question, asked with all gravity, and affording such a fine specimen of the very thing they were talking about,—city verdancy,—was received with a general laugh, which sent the tears brimming to Ettie’s eyes, when her father kindly replied:
“No, darling, the cows don’t eat boys; but they sometimes chase them, and toss them in the air with their horns, when they feel cross.”
“When we went to ride, the other day,” continued Ettie, “we saw a cow shaking her head at a dog, and running at him; and the dog kept jumping before her, and barking right in her face. She wanted to hook him, didn’t she?”
“Yes,” said her father; “and if the dog hadn’t been a little too spry for her, she would have sent him spinning into the air, just as you would toss up your doll.”
The conversation now changed to other topics, which we need not follow. It was not without an object that Mr. Davenport introduced the subject that has just been alluded to. This object was twofold. First, he wished to put Whistler on his guard against manifesting any impatience or unkindness if his cousin, in their walks about town, should happen to look at things pretty hard. And then, again, he thought it would be well enough to hint to Clinton, in a delicate way, that prolonged and excessive staring at novelties in the public streets, is regarded as a mark of rusticity by well-bred people. He knew that Clinton would not attempt to follow the rules he gave; neither did he suppose he would imitate his own example—somewhat exaggerated, no doubt—and make himself “as green as he pleased.” Curiosity would forbid the first, and that regard for the opinions of others which we all feel, deny it though we may, would prevent the other. He left it for his nephew’s good sense to find “the golden mean” between these two extremes.