"But," she insisted, after a pause, "you could n't have carried more than those four, could you?"
"No—that was just about a load."
"And we got them all in, did n't we?"
"Oh, yes—yes. What I meant was that you ought n't to work like that. But we certainly did get them all in. And it's the only way we could have done it. As it turned out, it was just the right thing to do—all that was necessary." After a moment's silence he felt he had not said quite enough. "You did first-class," he added. "The fact is, nobody could have done better."
Janet recovered her cheerfulness at once. She resumed her story of the day, and then, as she got around to the subject of the lamb again, she went into the shack and brought him out. Having been assured that he was looking well and was likely to recover, she sat down at her place again with the lamb in her lap. He lay there contentedly while she finished her supper.
"Yes," said Steve in answer to another of her questions, "lambs are kind of cute. Sometimes I feel bad for a lamb myself when his mother won't have anything to do with him. You ought to be out here later on, Miss Janet, when the lambs have all been born and are starting to get frisky. That's when the fun begins."
"I have heard that lambs play together like children," she said.
"Oh, they do. You see they've got to learn jumping, too. And climbing—like a goat. That first lamb will soon be so lively that plain running won't be good enough for him. He 'll want to do fancy tricks."
"Nature teaches them to play," observed Janet. "That's to give them practice and make them strong."
"I should say she did," said Steve, referring thus familiarly to Nature. "She puts all sorts of notions into their heads."