"Where are you going, my pretty maids?" laughed Mr. White.
"We're 'going a-milking, sir, she said,'" Mary replied.
Then each little girl took a tin cup and followed Mr. White and Billy to the pasture where Bonny-Belle and Bess stood waiting. Billy let down the bars and the cows came into the barnyard. Mr. White milked Bonny-Belle and Billy milked Bess.
The little girls stood near and watched.
How Mr. White and Billy laughed when little Dot said, "Oh, is that the way you get milk on a farm? We get ours out of bottles."
Before milking time was over each little girl held her cup and had it milked full of fresh, new milk.
At first the children thought they would carry the cups home and drink the milk for breakfast. But they were so hungry they couldn't wait, so they drank it standing in the barnyard, with Bonny-Belle and Bess looking at them with soft, kind eyes.
That afternoon Mary had some work to do and Betty and Peggy went for a walk with their mothers.
Little Dot was tired from her early morning visit to the barnyard. So she took a book of fairy stories and went out into the near-by field. She settled herself cozily under a big maple tree and began to read. After a little while the book slid from her hands. Her head nodded and nodded and then rested on the grass. Her eyes winked and winked and then closed.
She must have slept almost an hour when she woke with a start. Something very soft and moist was moving over her nose and cheeks. It felt almost as if her face were being washed with a sticky cloth.