Page:The New-Year's Bargain (1884).djvu/112

 The little maid in gray kirtle and scarlet jacket, with a yellow chicken on each shoulder, and the white lamb following close behind, rubbing its cold, soft nose against her hand, made so pretty a picture that it seemed sad it should ever grow old or in any way alter. But little girls cannot always be little, nor is it desirable they should; and, for the lamb, practical Thekla had no notion of keeping him for a useless plaything. Already she had begun to talk of the stockings Grandfather was to have out of the first shearing when lammie should become a sheep, and the comforter which she would knit for Max to tie about his throat on cold days. And, as if to please her, lammie made haste to be big.

As the days came one by one, long and beautiful, it seemed hard to let them go. "Oh, not yet!" the children cried each night to the sun as he dipped below the horizon; and each night he tarried longer and longer, as if in answer to their prayer. But in the end he always had to go. And so, too, the sweet Month finally said