"Oh me!" cried Hildegarde, laughing. "You little Old Man of the Sea, how can I run and sing too?" She sat down under the laburnum-tree, and taking the two tiny hands in hers, began to pat them together, while she went on with the "Butterfly's Ball," singing it now to the tune of a certain hornpipe, which fitted it to perfection. She had not heard the verses since she was a little girl, but she could never forget the delight of her childhood.
"And there came the Beetle, so blind and so black,
Who carried the Emmet, his friend, on his back.
And there came the Gnat, and the Dragon-fly too,
With all their relations, green, orange, and blue.
"And there came the Moth—"
At this moment came something else, more welcome than the moth would have been; for Rose appeared, bearing a mug in one hand, and in the other—what?
"Cow!" cried Benny, sitting upright, and stretching out both arms in rapture. "My cow! mine! all mine!"
"Yes, your cow, dear, for now!" said Rose, setting the treasure down on the table. "Look, Benny! she is such a good cow! She is going to give you some milk,—nice, fresh milk!"
The brown crockery cow was indeed a milk-jug; and Benny's blue eyes and Hildegarde's gray ones opened wide in amazement as Rose, grasping the creature's tail and tilting her forward, poured a stream of milk from her open mouth into the mug. The child laughed, and clapped his hands with delight.
"Where did you get it?" asked Hildegarde in a low tone, as she held the mug to Benny's lips.
"Saint Martha!" replied Rose, smiling. "It belonged to her grandmother. She brought it down just now, and said she had seen many a child quieted with it, and the little one would very likely be for crying at first, in a strange place! Isn't it nice?"
"Nice!" said Hildegarde; "I never want to drink out of anything else but a brown cow. Dear Martha! and observe the effect!"
Indeed, Benny was laughing, and patting the cow, and chattering to it, as if no such thing as a gray rubber elephant had ever existed. So fickle is childhood!