“’Twon’t take you not five minutes altogether,” said Daisy, scrambling hastily down from the gate. “Come along.”
Anna followed her back to the farmyard, where she pushed open the door of a shed, and beckoned her companion in. All was dim and shadowy, and there was a smell of new milk and hay. At first Anna could see nothing, but soon she made out, penned into a corner, a little, brown calf, with a white star on its forehead; it turned its dewy, dark eyes reproachfully upon them as they entered.
“You can stroke its nose,” said its owner, patronisingly.
“Shall you call it Daisy?” asked Anna, reaching over the hurdles to pat the soft, velvety muzzle.
“Mother says we mustn’t have no more Daisies,” said its mistress, shaking her little, round head gravely. “You see puppa called all the cows Daisy, after me, for ever so long. There was Old Daisy, and Young Daisy, and Red Daisy, and White Daisy, and Big Daisy, and Little Daisy, and a whole lot more. So this one is to be called something different. Mother say Stars would be best.”
As she spoke, a distant clock began to tell out the hour. Anna counted the strokes with anxiety. Actually seven! The dinner hour at Waverley, and whatever haste she made, she must be terribly late.
“Ah, I must go,” she said, “I ought not to have stayed so long. Good-bye. Thank you.”
“Come over again,” said Daisy, calling after her as she ran to the gate. “Come at milking-time, and I’ll show you all the lot.”
Anna nodded and smiled, and ran off as fast as she could. This was her first transgression at the Vicarage. What would Aunt Sarah say?