Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/161

Rh "hound." She named him Tan. "Tan," she explained, "is a better name than Dan. Tan is his color. Dan is a sleepy sort of voice (sound). If he had been called Dan, perhaps he would have been sleepy." Seeing the holes in my flower-beds and grass-plot, I wish he had. "He thinks it a world of delight to get outside," she remarks; and she is always somewhat rueful when he has to be left at home. On these occasions Tan knows he is not going, and he races round to the yard-door, where he looks out from a hole at the bottom—one bright dark brown eye and a black muzzle visible—with pleading wistfulness, "Can't I go too?" "Look at One-eye-and-a-nose!" cries W. V. "I don't think he likes that name; his proper name is Tan. It wouldn't be a bad idea to make a poem—

would it, father? Will you make it?" And she laughs remorselessly; but long before we return her thoughts are with the "hound." The puffing of the train is like his panting; its whistle reminds her of his howl. "I expect he will be seeking for me sorrowfully," she tells me, "but when he sees me all his sorrow will be gone. The dear old thing! You'll pat him, father, won't you?" All which contrasts drolly enough with her own occasional intolerance of tenderness. "Oh, mother, don't kiss me so much; too many kisses spoil the girl!" But then, of course, her love for her "hound" is mixed with savagery. Ever since I taught her the craft of the bow and arrow, Tan (as a wolf) goes in terror for his life. Still, it is worth noting that she continues to kiss the flowers good-night. Do flowers touch her as something more human, something more like herself in color? At any rate, Tan has not superseded them.

Early in the spring it occurred to me to ascertain the range of her vocabulary. I did not succeed, but I came to the conclusion that a child of six, of average intelligence, may be safely credited with a knowledge of at least 2,000 words. A clear practical knowledge, too; for in making up my lists I tried to test how far she had mastered the sense as well as the sound. Punctual, she told me, meant "just the time;" dead, "when you have left off breathing—and your heart stops beating, too," she added as an afterthought; messenger, "anybody who goes and fetches things;" then, as a bee flew past, "a bee is a messenger; he leaves parcels of flower-dust on the sticky things that stand up in a flower." "The pistils?" "Oh yes, pistils and stamens; I remember those old words." Flame, she explained, is "the power of the match." What did she mean by "power"? "Oh, well, we have a power of talking;" so that flame, I gather, is a match's way of expressing itself. What was a hero? "Perseus was one; a very brave man who could kill a Gorgon." "Brain is what you think with in your head; and"—physiological afterthought—"the more you think the more crinkles there are." And sensible? "The opposite to silly." And opposite? "One at the top" (pointing to the table) "and one at the bottom; they would be opposite." Lady? "A woman." But a woman is not always a lady. "If she was kind I would know she was a lady." Noble? "Stately; a great person. You are the noble of the office, you know, father." "Domino," as an equivalent for "That's done with," has a ring of achievement about it, but "jumbos" in the sense of "lots," "heaps," cannot commend itself even to the worshippers of the immortal elephant. While I linger over these fond trivialities, let me set down one or two of her phrases. "You would laugh me out of my death-bed, mother," she said the other day, when her mother made a remark that greatly tickled her fancy. As the thread twanged while a button was being sewn on her boot, "Auntie, you are making the boot laugh!" "I shall clench my teeth at you, if you won't let me." "Mother, I haven't said my prayers; let me say them on your blessed lap of heaven."

What a little beehive of a brain it is, and what busy, hustling, swarming thoughts and fancies are filling its cells! I told her that God made the heavens and the earth and all things a long, long while ago. "And isn't He dead?"—like the "old Romans" and the others. "I think God must be very clever to make people. We couldn't make ourselves, could we? Is there really a man in the sky who made us?" "Not a man, a great invisible Being." "A Sorcerer? I suppose we have to give Him a name, so we call Him God." And yet at times she is distinctly orthodox. "Do you really love your father?" "Oh yes, father." "Do you worship him?" "I should think not," with a gracious smile. "Why? What is worship?" "You and mother and I and everybody worships God. He is the