thing that spoiled the beauty of the landscape for her.
Before them on the right extended Mr. Harrison’s broad, gray-green field of late oats, wet and luxuriant; and there, standing squarely in the middle of it, up to her sleek sides in the lush growth, and blinking at them calmly over the intervening tassels, was a Jersey cow!
Anne dropped the reins and stood up with a tightening of the lips that boded no good to the predatory quadruped. Not a word said she, but she climbed nimbly down over the wheels, and whisked across the fence before Diana understood what had happened.
“Anne, come back,” shrieked the latter, as soon as she found her voice. “You’ll ruin your dress in that wet grain . . . ruin it. She doesn’t hear me! Well, she’ll never get that cow out by herself. I must go and help her, of course.”
Anne was charging through the grain like a mad thing. Diana hopped briskly down, tied the horse securely to a post, turned the skirt of her pretty gingham dress over her shoulders, mounted the fence, and started in pursuit of her frantic friend. She could run faster than Anne, who was hampered by her clinging and drenched skirt, and soon overtook her. Behind them they left a trail that would break Mr. Harrison’s heart when he should see it.
“Anne, for mercy’s sake, stop,” panted poor Diana. “I’m right out of breath and you are wet to the skin.”
