the Lambs are when they first come--so weak and awkward!
They can hardly stand alone, and stagger and wobble around the little
rooms or pens where they are with their mothers. You can just imagine
how hard it must be to learn to manage four legs all at once!

There is one thing which they do learn very quickly, and that is, to
eat. They are hungry little people, and well they may be, for they have
much growing to do, and all of the food that is to be made into good
stout bodies and fine long wool has to go into their mouths and down
their throats to their stomachs. It is very wonderful to think that a
Cow eats grass and it is turned into hair to keep her warm, a Goose eats
grass and grows feathers, and a Sheep eats grass and grows wool. Still,
it is so, and nobody in the world can tell why. It is just one of the
things that are, and if you should ask "Why?" nobody could tell you the
reason. There are many such things which we cannot understand, but there
are many more which we can, so it would be very foolish for us to mind
when there is no answer to our "Why?"

Yes, Sheep eat grass, and because they have such tiny mouths they have
to take small mouthfuls. The Lambs have different food for a
while,--warm milk from their mothers' bodies. When a mother has a Lamb
to feed, she eats a great deal, hay, grass, and chopped turnips, and
then part of the food that goes into her stomach is turned into milk and
stored in two warm bags for the Lamb to take when he is hungry. And how
the Lambs do like this milk! It tastes so good that they can hardly
stand still while they drink it down, and they give funny little jerks
and wave their woolly tails in the air.

[Illustration: THE LAMB WITH THE LONGEST TAIL.]

There was one Lamb who had a longer tail than any of the rest, and, sad
to say, it made him rather vain. When he first came, he was too busy
drinking milk and learning to walk, to think about tails, but as he grew
older and stronger he began to know that he had the longest one. Because
he was a very young Lamb he was so foolish as to tease the others and
call out, "Baa! your tails are snippy ones!"

Then the others would call back, "Baa! Don't care if they are!"

After a while, his mother, who was a sensible Sheep and had seen much of
life, said to him: "You must not brag about your tail. It is very rude
of you, and very silly too, for you have exactly such a tail as was
given to you, and the other Lambs have exactly such t