made friends with the calves his own
way. He wiggled through the bars of the gate into their pasture. The
calves stared at him; they sniffed at him. Then they came a little
closer. They stared at him again. They sniffed at him again. Then they
came closer still. Then one little black and white thing came right up
to him and licked his face and hands. And three-year-old Eben liked the
feel of the soft nose and the rough tongue and he liked the sweet cow
smell.

So it came about that Eben played regularly with the calves. It always
amused his father Andrew to watch them together. "I never saw a child so
crazy about cows!" he used to say. One day he put a pretty little new
calf,--white with red spots,--into the pasture. Eben ran to the calf at
once. "What shall we call the calf, Eben?" asked his father. "Think of
some nice name for her." Eben put his arms around the calf's neck and
smiled. "I call him 'ittle Sister," he said. For little baby sister was
the only thing three-year-old Eben loved better than a calf. And the
name stuck to the calves of Green Mountain Farm. From that time on they
were always called Little Sisters!

Real little sister or Nancy, as she was called, grew apace. To her Eben
was always wonderful. At six years he seemed equal to about anything. It
did not surprise her at all one day to hear her father say, "Eben, you
get the cows tonight." But it did surprise Eben. He had helped his
father drive them home for years. And now he was to do it alone! Down
the dusty road he went, switch in hand, taking such big important
strides that the footprints of his little bare feet were almost as far
apart as a man's. The cows stood facing the bars. He took down the bars.
The cows filed through one by one. Nancy and her father, waiting to help
him turn the cows in at the barn, knew he was coming. They could see the
cloud of dust and hear the many shuffling feet and the shrill boy's
voice calling: "Hi, Spotty, don't you stop to eat! Go 'long there,
Crumplehorn, don't you know the way home yet! Hurry up, Redface. Can't
you keep in the road?" Eben felt older from that day.

From the day he began driving home the cows alone Eben took a real share
in the work at the farm. He put the cows' heads into the stanchions when
each one lumbered into her stall. He fed them hay and ensilage through
the long winter months when the meadows were white with snow. He put
the cans to catch the cream and the skimmed milk when his fathe