her head for me to pet, and lows when she sees me coming. She is a very wise cow. I wish she could talk." "I wonder what her conversation would be like?" I said, laughing. [Pg 28] [Pg 28] "Oh, I know!" answered the child, confidently; though she laughed, too. "You do? Well, let me hear it!" I said, entering into her humor. "She'd talk about the sweet green clover and the grass and the fields, where she has lived; and about the hills, for she's been up here a great many years. She was born before I was, and she looks at everything with her big brown eyes as if she were thinking about them. She might be able to tell if there were any fairies or things of that kind; for she's out sometimes in the moonlight, or at dusk and in the early morning, too, when people say they pass by." "You mustn't believe all the people tell you," I answered, though I was half sorry for the suggestion when I saw how her face clouded over. "Their tales might be like the golden streets and the silver birds." She arose slowly, and seemed as if about to turn away; then she added, half to herself: "I wonder if she knows anything about what he is trying to find out, what he has found out?" "Who?" I asked hastily. "Some one," she said, evasively. "Oh, the bell is tinkling again. Cusha might get lost. Good-by! And come soon to the castle. I will show you every bit of it and tell you true things about it." She said the last words loftily, as though to let me know that all her talk was not of the unreal, the fictitious, the poetic. I sat a few minutes longer musing over her and her story; and then began to read, perhaps as an offset, a transatlantic fashion paper which had reached me by mail that morning. [Pg 29] [Pg 29] CHAPTER IV. A SINGULAR FIGURE.
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