But the Pretty Lady had not travelled
for some years, and did not enjoy the trip as well as formerly; on the
contrary she curled herself into a round tight ball in one corner of the
basket till the journey's end was reached.
Once at the farm she seemed contented as long as I remained with her.
There was plenty of milk and cream, and she caught a great many mice.
She was far too dainty to eat them, but she had an inherent pleasure in
catching mice, just like her more plebeian sisters; and she enjoyed
presenting them to Mr. McGinty or me, or some other worthy object of her
solicitude.
She was at first afraid of "the big outdoors." The wide, wind-blown
spaces, the broad, sunshiny sky, the silence and the roominess of it
all, were quite different from her suburban experiences; and the farm
animals, too, were in her opinion curiously dangerous objects. Big Dan,
the horse, was truly a horrible creature; the rooster was a new and
suspicious species of biped, and the bleating calves objects of her
direst hatred.
The pig in his pen possessed for her the most horrid fascination. Again
and again would she steal out and place herself where she could see that
dreadful, strange, pink, fat creature inside his own quarters. She would
fix her round eyes widely upon him in blended fear and admiration. If
the pig uttered the characteristic grunt of his race, the Pretty Lady at
first ran swiftly away; but afterward she used to turn and gaze
anxiously at us, as if to say:--
"Do you hear that? Isn't this a truly horrible creature?" and in other
ways evince the same sort of surprise that a professor in the Peabody
Museum might, were the skeleton of the megatherium suddenly to accost
him after the manner peculiar to its kind.
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