But Elisabeth was not shy, and had no sympathy with anybody who was. "How much do you like me?" she continued.
"Then you can't. Nobody can tell how much they like anybody. You do ask silly questions!"
"Yes; they can. I can tell how much I like everybody," Elisabeth persisted.
"I have a sort of thermometer in my mind, just like the big thermometer in the hall; and I measure how much I like people by that."
"How much do you like your Cousin Anne?" he asked.
"Ninety-six degrees," replied Elisabeth promptly.
"Fifty-four." Elisabeth always knew her own mind.
"I say, how--how--how much do you like me?" asked Christopher, with some hesitation.
"Sixty-two," answered Elisabeth, with no hesitation at all.
And Christopher felt a funny, cold feeling round his loyal heart. He grew to know the feeling well in after years, and to wonder how Elisabeth could understand so much and yet understand so little; but at present he was too young to understand himself.
The best of piggie when he dies Is not "interred with his bones," But, in the form of porcine pies, Blesses a world that heard his cries, Yet heeded not those dying groans.
"Cousin Maria, please may I go to tea at Mrs. Bateson's with Christopher?" said Elisabeth one day, opening the library door a little, and endeavouring to squeeze her small person through as narrow an aperture as possible, as is the custom with children. She never called her playmate "Chris" in speaking to Miss Farringdon; for this latter regarded it as actually sinful to address people by any abbreviation of their baptismal names, just as she considered it positively immoral to partake of any nourishment between meals. "Mrs. Bateson has killed her pig, and there will be pork-pies for tea."
Miss Farringdon looked over her spectacles at the restless little figure. "Yes, my child; I see no reason why you should not. Kezia Bateson is a God-fearing woman, and her husband has worked at the Osierfield for forty years. I have the greatest respect for Caleb Bateson; he is a worthy man and a good Methodist, as his father was before him."
"He is a very ignorant man: he says Penny-lope."
"Penny-lope. I was showing him a book the other day about Penelope--the woman with the web, you know--and he called her Penny-lope. I didn't like to correct him, but I said Penelope afterward as often and as loud as I could."