While Fetchke pottered in the kitchen beside the maid or trotted all about the house after my grandmother, I wasted time in some window corner, or studied the habits of the cow and the chickens in the yard.

I always found something to do that was of no use to anybody.

I had no particular fondness for animals; I liked to see what they did, merely because they were curious.

The red cow would go to meet my grandmother as she came out of the kitchen with a bucket of bran for her.

She drank it up in no time, the greedy creature, in great loud gulps; and then she stood with dripping nostrils over the empty bucket, staring at me on the other side.