"No indeed," cried Martin, "he bought them for pets, and to look pretty running about the meadow in the summer time. He says they are too tame and loving to be killed. I shouldn't like to think of such a thing, I am sure. There,—do see old Moolly poking her head over the wagon! How she does want to come in! She always was our pet before, and I suppose it makes her a little jealous. Poor Moolly,—good little Moolly."
Martin picked up a corn-cob and rubbed the cow's ears. She stood quite still to let him do it, and when he stopped she stretched out her head for more and looked at him as if she had not had half her share.
"Are the little lambs named?" asked Bessie, as she got up from the hay to go.
"No," said Martin; "Nelly's father told her she might call them any thing she wanted, but she thinks they are such funny little long-legged things that she cannot find names pretty enough. When they grow stronger they will frisk about and be full of play."
"I mean to run over to the house to see her and ask her about it," said Bessie. "I am real glad you called me, Martin, to look at them."
Martin went back to his hay-cutting, and Bessie bade him good-by, and skipped along the path to the house. Bessie always skipped instead of walking or running, when she was particularly pleased with any thing. On knocking at the farm-house door, she was told to her great sorrow that Nelly was not within, but when she heard that she had just started to pay a visit to herself, that sorrow was changed to joy, and she turned to go home with a very light heart and a pair of very brisk feet.
"Perhaps I can overtake her," she said to herself; but go as fast as she could, she saw nothing of Nelly on the road. When she reached home, she was so warm with the exercise that it seemed to her as though the day were a very mild one indeed. As she pushed open the door of the kitchen, her eyes were so bright and her cheeks so red from her little run, that her mother looked up from her work and asked what she had been doing.
"Only racing down the hill to find Nelly," panted Bessie, sinking into a chair as she spoke. "Isn't she here? I didn't overtake her."