Pearl asked, nodding toward the house.

"Who? So-Bossie?"

"No, Mrs. Motherwell."

"Well, no," he answered slowly. "You haven't heard of her having a fit,
have you?"

"No," Pearl answered wonderingly.

"Then we're safe in saying that the secret has been kept from her."

"Does it hurt her, though?" Pearl asked.

"It would, very much, if she knew it," the young man replied gravely.

"Oh, I mean the cow," Pearl said hastily.

"It doesn't hurt the cow a bit. What does she care who gets the milk?
When did you come?"

"To-night," Pearl said. "I must hurry. She'll have a rod in steep for
me if I'm late. My name's Pearl Watson. What's yours?"

"Jim Russell," he said. "I know your brother Teddy."

Pearl was speeding down the hill. She shouted back:

"I know who you are now. Good-bye!" Pearl ran to catch up to the cows,
for the sun was throwing long shadows over the pasture, and the
plaintive lowing of the hungry calves came faintly to her ears.

A blond young man stood at the bars with four milk pails.

He raised his hat when he spoke to Pearl.

"Madam says you are to help me to milk, but I assure you it is quite
unnecessary. Really, I would much prefer that you shouldn't."

"Why?" Pearl asked in wonder.

"Oh, by Jove! You see it is not a woman's place to work outside like
this, don't you know."

"That's because ye'r English," Pearl said, a sudden light breaking in
on her. "Ma says when ye git a nice Englishman there's nothing nicer,
and pa knowed one once that was so polite he used to say 'Haw Buck' to
the ox and then he'd say, 'Oh, I beg yer pardon, I mean gee.' It wasn't
you, was it?"

"No," he said smiling, "I have never driven oxen, but I have done a
great many ridiculous things I am sure."

"So have I," Pearl said confidentially, as she sat down on a little
three-legged stool to milk So-Bossie. "You know them fluffy white
things all made of lace and truck like that, that is hung over the beds
in rich people's houses, over the pillows, I mean?"

"Pillow-shams?" he asked.

"Yes, that's them! Well, when I stayed with Camilla one night at Mrs.
Francis's didn't I think they were things to pull down to keep the
flies off ye'r face. Say, you should have heard Camilla laugh, and ma
saw a girl at a picnic once who drank lemonade through her veil, and
she et a banana, skin and all."

Pearl laughed heartily, but the Englishman only smiled faintly.
Canadian ways were growing stranger all the time.

"Sa