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“What’s that, Uncle Hank? It looks something like a calf.”

“’S a dogie, honey,” he explained, absently.

“A dogie,” the child repeated. “Dogies are a kind of animal I don’t know. Is it wild, or tame?”

Pearsall laughed.

“You was right in the first place, sister,” he said. “That pore little skeesicks is a calf. It lost its mother when it was too young to eat grass rightly; so it sort of starves along, and gets stunted and runted. We call ’em dogies. You’ll see one every once in a while, round over the range. They’re no good to nobody—nor to theirselves.”

“Oh,” said Hilda, under her breath.

A day or so later, finding her a bit drooping, Pearsall questioned:

“What’s the matter, sister? Is something worrying you?”

“Uncle Hank,” she explained, with some diffidence, “my heart is sad about dogies. I saw two of them to-day, and my heart is sad about them, ever since.”

(She had wanted to say, in the language of one of her favorite ballads, “My heart is wae”; but judged that that might be a little too much for her companion, and tried him with a simpler literary form.)