d out. "Not that she can run half as fast as I can, her
legs are so short! But she could help. I really can't be expected to
do all the work by myself!"

Madge was getting tired, and consequently cross. So, rather funnily,
she was beginning to feel it quite a grievance that nobody had come out
to help her to drive the goats, forgetting that it was entirely her own
wish to undertake the job alone. As she somewhat sullenly walked
towards the house, she prepared several severe speeches to be addressed
to Betty on the selfishness of lying in bed and leaving her sister to
do all the work. But just as she was getting into a state of
considerable indignation, out of the open front-door walked her father.

Captain West had evidently dressed in a hurry like his daughter. In
point of fact he had been suddenly wakened by one of Madge's
involuntary cries, for though she had every intention of being very
quiet, she could not altogether suppress an occasional shout when the
goats were unusually irritating. He had started up and looked into the
passage. All seemed quiet, but a gleam of light in the hall below
showed him that the front-door was open. Between three and four
o'clock in the morning this was a fairly peculiar circumstance. So,
returning to his room he hastily slipped on the first clothes he came
across and proceeded downstairs, to find out who was about at that
early hour.

"Hullo, Madge! What on earth are you doing?" he exclaimed, as he
suddenly found himself face to face with his eldest daughter.

Madge explained the whole story in rather a confused, disjointed sort
of way. It was not at all the triumphal return to the house that she
had planned. If things had gone as she intended she would easily have
caught Jack and Jill; they would have come to eat a little grass out of
her hand, and then she would gently but firmly have led them back to
the calves' house. Here she would have secured the door more skilfully
than her elders had done the previous evening, so that there would have
been no further possibility of escape for the prisoners. And then she
would have strolled quietly back to the house, and explained to an
admiring audience at breakfast-time what precautions she had taken for
the safety of the garden while the more negligent members of the family
slept. It was certainly very disappointing to be treated by her father
as a naughty child instead of a heroine, and scolded for her stupidity
in ru