mas. "Do you notice the kind of eyes it has?"

"Why does a cow have horns?" said Brigid.

So they asked the cow that question, but it only smiled and said
nothing.

"If a cow talked to you," said Brigid, "what would it say?"

"Let us be cows," replied Seumas, "and then, maybe, we will find out."

So they became cows and ate a few blades of grass, but they found that
when they were cows they did not want to say anything but "moo," and
they decided that cows did not want to say anything more than that
either, and they became interested in the reflection that, perhaps,
nothing else was worth saying.

A long, thin, yellow-coloured fly was going in that direction on a
journey, and he stopped to rest himself on the cow's nose.

"You are welcome," said the cow.

"It's a great night for travelling," said the fly, "but one gets tired
alone. Have you seen any of my people about?"

"No," replied the cow, "no one but beetles to-night, and they seldom
stop for a talk. You've rather a good kind of life, I suppose, flying
about and enjoying yourself."

"We all have our troubles," said the fly in a melancholy voice, and he
commenced to clean his right wing with his leg.

"Does any one ever lie against your back the way these people are lying
against mine, or do they steal your milk?"

"There are too many spiders about," said the fly.

"No corner is safe from them; they squat in the grass and pounce on you.
I've got a twist, my eye trying to watch them. They are ugly,
voracious people without manners or neighbourliness, terrible, terrible
creatures."

"I have seen them," said the cow, "but they never done me any harm. Move
up a little bit please, I want to lick my nose: it's queer how itchy my
nose gets"--the fly moved up a bit. "If," the cow continued, "you had
stayed there, and if my tongue had hit you, I don't suppose you would
ever have recovered."

"Your tongue couldn't have hit me," said the by. "I move very quickly
you know."

Hereupon the cow slily whacked her tongue across her nose. She did not
see the fly move, but it was hovering safely half an inch over her nose.

"You see," said the fly.

"I do," replied the cow, and she bellowed so sudden and furious a snort
of laughter that the fly was blown far away by that gust and never came
back again.

This amused the cow exceedingly, and she chuckled and sniggered to
herself for a long time. The children had listened with great interest
to the conversation,