17. "I do so wish you were not so big, and I could take you up the stairs into our bed-room!" And Mercy half laughed at the idea of taking the donkey to bed with her.
18. She gave one last, hard hit and a rattle at the unkind door. "I cannot get it open, Brownie, and I must go home again. It will not do you any good if I stay out here with you."
19. Slowly the child moved away. If it had seemed cold when she first came out, it seemed ten times colder now. And she saw the sad look which the poor beast cast after her when she left him. Mercy could not forget it.
Write: Mercy went out into the cold that she might open the shed door. She wished to let the donkey in. But she could not open it.
Questions: 1. What did Mercy remember about the shed? 2. What did she put on? 3. Where did she go? 4. What was the weather like outside the house? 5. What did she find on trying to open the shed door? 6. What was it that Mercy could not forget?
3. THE OLD SHED.
1. All of a sudden, as Mercy had quite made up her mind to leave Brownie, and was half way across the yard to her own door, a thought struck her.
2. There was an old shed which had once been the stable of a donkey, quite at the far end of the garden.
3. Her father had turned it into a pigsty; but he had left off keeping pigs for some time. It was a clean place, for Peter did not let his pigs live in a dirty sty as some people do.