verdure began to clothe the sides of the mountain lower down, from which the snow had but recently disappeared.
Here grazed Mimili’s cattle. She had a name for every cow, and they would all turn round and look at her when she called them, and stand still to be patted. Their coats were as smooth as glass, and the animals were in high condition. The kids came bleating to her from the distant crags, licked her hands, and nibbled the biscuits and slices of bread and butter which she reached to them from the basket. She stooped down, played with and fondled them; so that I fairly envied the creatures, and would fain have implored Jupiter to transform me on the spot into a kid.
“Auli! Auli! Auli!” she then cried, and a curly-woolled lamb, having a little bell fastened round its neck with a yellow riband, came, bounding like a roe, and frisked about her. “This poor thing lost its mother,” said Mimili, scratching the poll of the little brute orphan, and putting its red nose into the hollow of her white hand,” and so I took care of the creature, and brought it up; and now it loves me, as if I were its mother.” With this pretty favourite she spoke pure Swiss. Observing a little blood on its left fore-foot, probably occasioned by the scratch of a thorn, she held it up, wiped off the blood with her handkerchief, and said, with
