dainty visitant might be acceptably lodged and fed, and afterward they
cursed their industry and hospitality that thus left her conversation
and charming aspect to the shirks and drones, who languished about her,
and affected to seek her comfort and minister to her entertainment. For
the cow-drivers, like the other pioneer settlers of that region and day,
represented various states of society and degrees of refinement, and to
those to whom she was not as a blissful reminiscence of long ago, she
appeared as a revelation, new and straight from heaven, a fancy, a
dream! It seemed meet to them that she arrived in the illusory sunset of
a sweet spring day, like some lovely forecast of the visions of the
night.

With their artless bucolic ideals of entertainment they invited her out
to show her the new calves. One of these little creatures, being
exquisitely white and eminently pleasing to look upon, was straightway
named, with her gracious permission, "Peninnah Penelope Anne," and she
was assured that because of this name its owner, a slim, sentimental,
red-haired youth, would never part from it. And it may be presumed that
he was sincere, and that at the time of this fervent asseveration he had
not realized the incongruity of living his life out in the constant heed
of the well-being and companionship of a large white cow of the name of
"Peninnah Penelope Anne." A more interesting denizen of the pen was a
fawn, a waif found there one morning, having prudently adopted as a
mother a large red cow, and a heavy brindled calf as a foster-brother.
The instant Peninnah admired this incongruous estray, bleating its queer
alien note in resonant duet with the calf in the plea for supper, a cord
was slipped about its neck and it was presented in due form. In order
that she might not be harassed by its tendance, a gigantic Scotch
herder, six feet six inches high and twenty-five years of age, showed
how far involuntary inanity can coexist with presumptive sanity as he