Then to make sure that she did not get a whipping, Uncle Jack, who was eighteen and preparing for college, would snatch her away from Aunt Lucretia and take her out to see the colts. At sight of them her troubles vanished; for her love of all live things which are born on a stock farm was as deep as her Ballington blood. A great burst of sunshine would spread over her conscience-stricken face.
"O Uncle Jack, aren't they just too sweet for anything? Do let me get down this minute and hug them--every one!" And Uncle Jack would let her, if he had to catch each colt himself.
The clear-cut way she talked English! And her great heart of motherhood! These were the two wonderful things in a tot so small. It was not difficult to see where she inherited the first. But how could so tiny a thing have such a great mother-heart? She loved everything little--everything _just born_ on the place. The fact that anything in hair, hide or feathers had arrived was a cause of jollification. "O do let me see the dear little things!" would be her cry. And she generally saw them if Uncle Jack were around.
One day they missed her from the house and Uncle Jack quickly tracked her to the cow barn. It had occurred to him that the day before he had shown her the Short-Horn's latest edition, a big, double-jointed, ugly, hungry male calf, who slept all day in a bedded stall, a young Hercules in repose, and only waked up long enough to wrinkle his huge nose and sleep again.
There Uncle Jack found her. She had climbed over the high stall-gate to pet and coddle the great calf. She had placed her own beautiful string of beads around his tawny neck.
"Come out of there," laughed Uncle Jack. "What do you see pretty about that great ugly calf?"
"O Uncle Jack," and she sighed affectedly, "I am truly sorry for him. He is not pretty, to be sure--and so I have given him my beads. And he doesn't seem to be very bright, nor at all well mannered, poor dear--but--but," she added reflectively--"he has a lovely curly head and he seems to be such a healthy child!"
On another occasion they missed her. It was nearly night. Everybody started out in alarm to hunt for her. Aunt Lucretia was the first to find her, coming from the brood-sow's lot.