said she.
"But father said I was mistaken," said Flax, "and did not find it."
"Well, dear," said her mother, "your father is a poet, and very wise;
we will say no more about it. You can sit down here and hold the baby
now, while I make the tea."
Flax was perfectly ready to do that; and, as she sat there with her
darling little baby brother crowing in her lap, and watched her pretty
little brothers and sisters and her dear mother, she felt so happy
that she did not care any longer whether she had found the true Pot of
Gold at the end of the rainbow or not.
But, after all, do you know, I think her father was mistaken, and that
she had.
THE COW WITH GOLDEN HORNS.
Once there was a farmer who had a very rare and valuable cow. There
was not another like her in the whole kingdom. She was as white as
the whitest lily you ever saw, and her horns, which curved very
gracefully, were of gold.
She had a charming green meadow, with a silvery pool in the middle, to
feed in. Almost all the grass was blue-eyed grass, too, and there were
yellow lilies all over the pool.
The farmer's daughter, who was a milkmaid, used to tend the
gold-horned cow. She was a very pretty girl. Her name was Drusilla.
She had long flaxen hair, which hung down to her ankles in two smooth
braids, tied with blue ribbons. She had blue eyes and pink cheeks, and
she wore a blue petticoat, with garlands of rose-buds all over it, and
a white dimity short gown, looped up with bunches of roses. Her hat
was a straw flat, with a wreath of rose-buds around it, and she always
carried a green willow branch in her hand to drive the cow with.
She used to sit on a bank near the silvery pool, and watch the
gold-horned cow, and sing to herself all day from the time the dew was
sparkling over the meadow in the morning, till it fell again at night.
Then she would drive the cow gently home, with her green willow stick,
milk her, and feed her, and put her into her stable, herself, for the
night.
The farmer was feeble and old, so his daughter had to do all this. The
gold-horned cow's stable was a sort of a "lean-to," built into the
side of the cottage where Drusilla and her father lived. Its roof, as
well as that of the cottage, was thatched and overgrown with moss, out
of which had grown, in its turn, a little starry white flower, until
the whole roof looked like a flower-bed. There were roses climbing
over the walls of the cottage and stable, also,
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