"Oh, I am sure it does--if he has a conscience--for I suppose that's what you would call his feeling obliged to worry about us," I said, in quick defence of the absent friend whose actions I might secretly question, but of whom I could not bear that another should speak slightingly. I put on my old felt hat and took up the milk-pail. Jessie was busy over something that she was cooking in a skillet on the stove, but she glanced up as I opened the door, and a dash of rain came swirling in. "Why, Leslie Gordon! Are you going out in this storm dressed like that? Here, put on my mackintosh." I had forgotten all about wraps, but a shawl or cape would have been better than the long mackintosh that Jessie insisted upon buttoning me into. It was too long; the skirts nearly tripped me up as I started to run down the path to the corral, and when I held it up it was little protection. The corral where the cows were usually penned over-night was behind the barn. As I came in sight of it a feeling of almost despair swept over me. The corral bars were down, and the cows were gone! I hung the milk-pail bottom-side up on one of the bar posts. The raindrops played a lively tattoo on its resounding sides, while I dropped the mackintosh skirt, regardless of its trailing length, and stood still, trying to recollect that I had put up the bars after we had finished milking on the previous evening. Search my memory as I might, however, I could not find that I had taken this simple but necessary precaution, and, if I had forgotten it, it was useless to suppose that Jessie had not. "It's just my negligence!" I remarked, scornfully, to my drenched surroundings; "just my negligence, and now I shall have to hunt for those cows, and in this rain that shuts everything out it will be like looking for a needle in a haymow." I took down the pail, seeming to take down an entire chorus of singing water witches with it, and retraced my steps to the house. Even this simple act was performed with some difficulty, for again I stepped on the mackintosh and nearly fell. "You've been very quick with the milking, and breakfast's all ready," Jessie remarked, cheerfully, as I entered, and then, catching sight of the empty pail, she exclaimed, "Why, what's the matter?" When I told her, she said, reproachfully, "Leslie, of course I supposed that you would put up the bars after we had finished milking last night!" I am afraid that I was cross as well as tired: "Why, 'of course,' Jessie? Why is it, can you tell me, that there is always some one member of a family who is supposed, quite as a matter of course, to make good the short-comings and long-goings of all the others? To straighten out the domestic tangles, to remember, always remember, what the others forget; to be good-tempered when others are ill-tempered; to--" Jessie laid a brown little hand on my shoulder, checking the torrent of my eloquence; she laid her cheek against my own for a passing instant.