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."

Dora followed this advice, for she had not considered a milk-stai