But Dolly was any thing but good. She stood switching her tail, and looking as savage as so mild an animal possibly could look.
"It's all your doing, you naughty children! You have been playing her some trick, I know," cried the Gardener, in great wrath.
They assured him they had done nothing, and indeed, they looked as quiet as mice and as innocent as lambs. At length the biggest boy pointed out a large wasp which had settled in Dolly's ear.
"That accounts for everything," said the Gardener.
But it did not mend everything; for when he tried to drive it away it kept coming back and back again, and buzzing round his own head and the cow's with a voice that the children thought was less like a buzz of a wasp than the sound of a person laughing. At length it frightened Dolly to such an extent that, with one wild bound she darted right away, and galloped off to the farther end of the field.
"I'll get a rope and tie her legs together," cried the Gardener, fiercely. "She shall repent giving me all this trouble—that she shall!"
"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed somebody. The Gardener thought it was the children, and gave one of them an angry cuff as he walked away. But they knew it was somebody else, and were not at all surprised when, the minute his back was turned, Dolly came walking quietly back, led by a little wee brown man who scarcely reached up to her knees. Yet she let him guide her, which he did as gently as possible, though the string he held her by was no thicker than a spider web, floating from one of her horns.
"Soh, Dolly! good Dolly!" cried Brownie, mimicking the Gardener's voice. "Now we'll see what we can do. I want my breakfast badly—don't you, little folks?"
Of course they did, for the morning air made them very hungry.
"Very well—wait a bit, though. Old people should be served first, you know. Besides, I want to go to bed."