and calf--both great personages in
her mind. But she flattered herself; her aspect in the straight, short
bodice that enclosed her stout little rotund figure, and the quaint
white mob-cap that encircled her chubby, roseate face, all smiles, and
indeterminate nose, and expanded, laughing, red mouth, and white,
glittering, irregular teeth, had little in common with the mother whom
she admired and imitated, and but for the remnant of the elder's stuff
gown, of which her own was fashioned, the comparison with the cow and
calf would have failed altogether. She was not even a good imitator of
the maternal methods. Of course the days of her own infancy, recent
though they were, had long been lost to her limited memory, and a token
of the length of time that they had dwelt in the wilderness, and the
impressions her juvenile faculties had received therefrom might have
been given by the fact that her doll was reared after pappoose fashion;
on her back was slung a basket in the manner of the peripatetic cradle
of the Indian women, and from this protruded the head and the widely
open eyes of a cat slightly past kittenhood, that was adapting its
preferences to the conditions of the journey with a discretion which
might argue an extension of the powers of instinct in pioneer
animals,--a claim which has often been advanced.

The cat evidently realized the fact that it was a domesticated creature,
that naught was possible for it in these strange woods but speedy
destruction by savage beast or man, and that decorous submission became
a cat promoted to the estate of a juvenile settler's baby. The cat was
as silent and as motionless during the halt as the rest of the party,
looking out watchfully over the shoulder of the little three-year-old,
who, with perfect and mute trust, and great, serene eyes, gazed up at
the face of her father, nothing doubting his infinite puissance and
willingness to take care of her. When he spoke and the tension was over,
she began to skip once more, the jostled cat putting out her claws to
hold to the wicker-work of her basket; the two had ridden most of the
day on one of the packhorses, their trifling weight adding but little to
the burden of the scanty store of clothing and bedding, the cooking and
farming utensils, the precious frying-pan and skillet, the invaluable
axe, hand-saw, auger, and hoe,--the lares and penates of the pioneer.
There were some surveying-instruments, too, and in the momentary
relaxat