Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/229



Rebecca had forgotten all her woes by now. Aunt Pearly Gates beamed happily on the happy little girl.

"What did you make out to think er ol' Aunt Peachy, honey?"

"Why, I can't make up my mind that she is a real person. She looks so like a queer old baboon Daddy and I used to see at the zoo. Just as I never could decide that the old baboon was not a person, so I can't quite believe Aunt Peachy is one. She mumbles the strangest things while I am there and keeps looking at me with her eyes shining like a rat's. Her eyes are not a bit like a baboon's. All monkey people have sad, soft eyes. No matter how mischievous they are, they always have a kind of mournful expression as though they had been kind of cheated in not having souls."

"You say she keeps a mumblin' things while you is aroun'?" asked Aunt Pearly Gates, a troubled expression on her kind old face.

"Yes, and one time she had a piece of putty