“Oh, they just came,” declared Tess. “I suppose,” she added, reverently, “that God just thought flowers, and at once there were flowers—everywhere.”
Dot stood up, picking up the Alice-doll, and holding all the blossoms she could carry in her other hand.
“Well,” she said, softly, looking out across the field so spangled with the gay flowers, “He must have thought hard about ’em when He made this place, Tessie, for there’s so many.”
The next moment the smallest Corner House girl forgot all her unfledged philosophy, for she suddenly shrieked:
“Oh, Tess! Oh, Tess! Look at that awful, terrible bull!”
Tess was so startled by her sister’s cry that she jumped up, scattering the blossoms she had herself gathered.
“Where? What bull?” she demanded, staring all around save in the right direction.
“There!” moaned Dot, who was dreadfully afraid of all bovine creatures, crushing both her flowers and her Alice-doll to her bosom.
Tess finally saw what Dot had beheld. A great head, with wide, dangerous looking horns, had appeared above a clump of bushes not far away. The animal was calmly chewing its cud; but the very sidewise motion of its jaws seemed threatening to the two smallest Corner House girls.
“Oh, Tess!” moaned Dot, again. “Will it eat us?”