She had spent too much of her life taking
care of animals to have much sentiment about
them. But Prince was a knowing little beast,
and she grew fond of him. After breakfast
I made him do his lessons; play dead dog,
shake hands, stand up like a soldier. We used
to put my cadet cap on his head -- I had to
take military drill at the University -- and
give him a yard-measure to hold with his
front leg. His gravity made us laugh im-
moderately.

Lena's talk always amused me. Antonia
had never talked like the people about her.
Even after she learned to speak English read-
ily there was always something impulsive
and foreign in her speech. But Lena had
picked up all the conventional expressions
she heard at Mrs. Thomas's dressmaking
shop. Those formal phrases, the very flower
of small-town proprieties, and the flat com-
monplaces, nearly all hypocritical in their ori-
gin, became very funny, very engaging, when
they were uttered in Lena's soft voice, with
her caressing intonation and arch naivete.
Nothing could be more diverting than to hear
Lena, who was almost as candid as Nature,
call a leg a "limb" or a house a "home."

[[318]]

p317 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p318w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p319

v?