"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-stained lap among the contingent circumstances of the afternoon. Holding the bottle over the listless animal, she managed to get some drops on its tongue. "Now," said Miriam, "we will put that in its mouth, and shut its jaws, and perhaps it may begin to suck. It will be perfectly dreadful if it dies." The two girls sat close together, their eyes fixed upon the apparently lifeless head of the bovine infant. "See!" cried Miriam, presently, "its throat moves; I believe it is sucking the milk." Dora leaned over and gazed. It was indeed true; the calf was beginning to take an interest in food. The interest increased; the girls could see the milk slowly diminishing in the bottle. Before long the creature gave its head a little wobble. Miriam was delighted. "That is the way it always does, when its appetite is good. We must let it drink every drop, if it will." There they sat on the hard, hay-strewn floor, one entirely, and the other almost entirely covered with purple silk, their eyes fixed upon the bottle and the feeding calf. After a time the latter declined to take any more milk, and raised its head from Miriam's lap. "There," she cried; "see, it can hold up its own head. I expect it was only faint from want of food. After this I will feed it oftener. It was the bread-making that made me forget it this time." "Let us wait a minute," said Dora, who was now taking an earnest and womanly interest in the welfare of this weakling. "Perhaps after a while it may want some more." And so they continued to sit. Every motion of the calf's head, and every effort it made to bend its legs, or change its position, sent sparkles of delight into Miriam's eyes, and brightened Dora's beautiful face with sympathetic smiles.