it a little now and then, to see a fresh face; and her tongue runs on “as if it had just been oiled,” as she presently interrupts herself to say—and, if we are really quite sure that we won’t take any more, will we just come and see her feed the lambs? for it is high time she did.
And, accordingly, she pours some of the nicely warmed milk into a clean lime-juice bottle, fitted with an india-rubber teat; the rest, for replenishing the bottle, is put into a billy; and out we go, across the race, through the kitchen garden, with its lines of sprouting peas and cabbages, and so down to a little patch of grass, held, as it were, in an elbow of the race, and sheltered by a tall gorse-hedge. Here, in sunshine and safety, in a green pasture literally, and beside still waters, dwells Catherine’s especial flock. The dear little snow-white things! Absolutely fearless, leaping and bounding, up they rush—ears of pink velvet, faces of innocence, voices. . . . Oh dear! of the very shrillest—They know it is meal-time, bless them!
“Those two are Peace and Plenty, and this dandified chap is Algernon,” says Catherine, presenting eager Algy with the bottle, while Peace butts at her knee, and Plenty lifts a plaintive nose to the billy in my hand. “Only three this year? yes! and I’m sure I want no more, they do so take one’s time. How many times a day am I feeding them? Only five now, but that’s quite enough. Every time Peter comes in from the paddock these days, I’m in a real fever for fear he brings more ‘pets’—last year I had eleven, and that was a treat! Not but what you can’t help but get fond of the poor little lonesome dears, all the same,”
