"Comrades, a prosaic but very important announcement I have to make. I have just been informed that there is no milk for supper. The cows have been neglected. They must be milked. I call for a dozen volunteer milkmaids until this adjustment can be made. Come, now!--and a dozen young men to assist them. Let's make this a test of your loyalty to the cause. All labour is equally honourable. Labour is the service of your fellow man. Who will be the first heroine to fill this breach in the walls of our defence?" Barbara sprang forward, with uplifted head, laughing. "I will!" "And I'll help you!" Norman cried, with a laugh. "Who will join us now? Come, you pretty chorus-girls! You wouldn't mind if you carried these milk-pails on the stage in a play. Well, this is the biggest stage you will ever appear on, and all the millions of the civilized world are watching." A pretty, rosy-cheeked girl joined Barbara. An admirer followed, and in a moment a dozen girls and their escorts had volunteered. They formed in line and marched to the cow lot with Norman and Barbara leading, singing and laughing and swinging their milk-pails like a crowd of rollicking children. When they reached the pasture where the cows were herded, Norman asked Barbara, with some misgivings: "Honestly, did you ever milk a cow?" "Of course I have," she promptly replied. "I spent two years on a farm once. Do you think I'd make a fool of myself trying before all these kids if I hadn't?" "I didn't know but that you made a bluff at it to lead the others on. What can I do, for heaven's sake?" Norman looked at her in a helpless sort of way while Barbara rolled up her sleeves. For the first time he saw her beautifully rounded bare arm to its full length. He stood with open-eyed admiration. Never had he seen anything so white and round and soft, so subtly and seductively suggestive of tenderness and love. "For heaven's sake, what do I do?" he repeated, blankly. "Get some meal in that bucket for my cow, and see that her calf don't get to her--I'll do the rest." Norman hustled to the barn with the other boys, got his bucket of meal, placed it in front of the cow Barbara had selected, and stood watching with admiration the skill with which her deft little hands pressed two streams of white milk into the bucket at her feet. "Goodness, you're a wonder," he cried, admiringly. "But where's the calf I'm supposed to be watching?" "I think that's the one standing close to the gate in the next lot watching me with envy. The first time the gate's opened he'll jump through if he gets half a chance--so look out!" "I'll watch him," Norman promised, without lifting his eyes from the rhythmic movement of the bare white arms.