"And I'll help you!" Norman cried, with a laugh. "Who will join us now? Come, you pretty chorus-girls! You wouldn't mind if you carried these milk-pails on the stage in a play. Well, this is the biggest stage you will ever appear on, and all the millions of the civilized world are watching."
A pretty, rosy-cheeked girl joined Barbara.
An admirer followed, and in a moment a dozen girls and their escorts had volunteered. They formed in line and marched to the cow lot with Norman and Barbara leading, singing and laughing and swinging their milk-pails like a crowd of rollicking children.
When they reached the pasture where the cows were herded, Norman asked Barbara, with some misgivings:
"Honestly, did you ever milk a cow?"
"Of course I have," she promptly replied. "I spent two years on a farm once. Do you think I'd make a fool of myself trying before all these kids if I hadn't?"
"I didn't know but that you made a bluff at it to lead the others on. What can I do, for heaven's sake?"
Norman looked at her in a helpless sort of way while Barbara rolled up her sleeves. For the first time he saw her beautifully rounded bare arm to its full length. He stood with open-eyed admiration. Never had he seen anything so white and round and soft, so subtly and seductively suggestive of tenderness and love.
"For heaven's sake, what do I do?" he repeated, blankly.
"Get some meal in that bucket for my cow, and see that her calf don't get to her—I'll do the rest."