went to put on a large blue pinafore; "I'll go
and help Mary with the milking."

Five minutes later she was seated on a low stool beside her favourite
cow, Beauty, which had been reared on the farm, and named by Ruth
herself, who petted and talked to her like an old friend. The afternoon
was very warm, but still and sweet and quiet, with the summer hush upon
everything, even the lowing of the cows in the farm-yard, the murmur of
the brook, and the voices of the workers in the distant hay-field.

"Ah me, old Beauty!" sighed Ruth, as she pressed the milk into the pail,
"mother says that it is the same thing over and over again all our
lives, and I suppose it is true, but I wish I could have something
different."

Beauty only lowed; but if she could have spoken English she might have
said, "If _you_ find life monotonous, what must it be for me? In the
morning I rise and crop the grass, then I come in to be milked. I go
back to the meadow and bathe in the stream or eat as much grass as I
want; in the afternoon I lie under the shade of the trees and chew the
cud; and in the evening I come again to be milked, and once more return
to the meadows. If I have a calf of my own, it is taken from me and
sent--I know not where. Yes, it is the same thing over and over again.
Yet I am quite content."

Whatever Beauty meant as she lowed and looked at Ruth with her great
patient eyes, the young girl did not understand, but went on thinking
aloud: "Yes, it is breakfast, dinner, tea and supper every day, and
mother has to see to it all; and the children to be washed and dressed
and nursed, and the cows to be milked, and the cream to be skimmed; and
then every year father has the ploughing, and sowing, and haying, and
the har----"

"Ah, Ruth, I see you are making yourself useful," cried her father, as
he entered the farm-yard followed by two merry looking boys aged
respectively seventeen and twelve. It was evident from a single glance
that they were Ruth's brothers, although their hands and faces were
brown and sunburnt, and Will, the elder, was fully a head taller than
his sister.

"Guess what Will has got for you, Ruth!" cried roguish little Ned.

"Oh, Will!" she exclaimed, looking up brightly, all her grave thoughts
gone in a moment, "have you brought a new plant for my garden? No! Has
Annie Price sent the pattern she promised for my wool-work? Well then,
is it the new tune-book you were talking of yesterday, with both the
musi