or the other.  It was simply a covering to keep one’s clothes clean when one fed a calf.  When they should return to the house, and she took off her old gown, she and her visitor would be better acquainted, and their comparative opinions of each other would not depend so much on clothes.  Miriam was accustomed to making philosophical reflections concerning her relations with the rest of the world; and in regard to these relations she was at times very sensitive.

CHAPTER XI

TWO GIRLS AND A CALF

Having gone to the kitchen to fill the bottle with milk, which she had set to warm, Miriam accompanied her guest to the barn.  As she walked by the side of Dora, with the bottle in one hand and the other holding up her voluminous silk robe, it was well for her peace of mind that no stately coachman sat upon a box and looked at her.

In a corner of the lower floor of the barn they found the calf, lying upon a bed of hay, and covered by a large piece of mosquito netting, which Miriam had fastened above and around him.  Dora laughed as she saw this.

“It isn’t every calf,” she said, “that sleeps so luxuriously.”

“The flies worried the poor thing dreadfully,” said Miriam, “but I take it off when I feed it.”

She proceeded to remove the netting, but she had scarcely done so, when she gave an exclamation that was almost a scream.

“Oh, dear, oh, dear!” she cried; “I believe it is dead,” and down she sat upon the floor close to the calf, which lay motionless, with its head and neck extended.  Down also sat Dora.  She did not need to consider the hay-strewn floor and her clothes; for although she wore a very tasteful and becoming costume, it was one she had selected with reference to barn explorations, field strolls, and anything rural and dusty which any one else might be doing, or might propose.  No one could tell what dusty and delightful occupation might turn up during an afternoon at Cobhurst.

“Its eye does look as if it were dead,” she exclaimed.  “What a pity!”

“Oh, you can’t tell by that eye,” said Miriam, over whose cheeks a few tears were now running.  “Dr. Tolbridge says it has infantile ophthalmia in that eye, but that as soon as it gets strong enough, he can cure it.  We must turn up its other eye.”

She took the little creature’s head in her lap, with the practicable eye uppermost.  This slowly rolled in its socket, as she bent over it.

“There is life in it yet,” she cried; “give me the bottle.”  The calf slowly rolled its eye to the position from which it had just moved, and declined to consider food.

“Oh, it must drink; we must make it drink,” said Miriam.  “If I open its mouth, will you put in the end of that tube?  If it gets a taste of the milk, it may want more.  We must not let it die.  But you must be careful,” she continued.  “That bottle leaks all round the cork.  Spread part of my skirt over you.”