One day when brother John came home from market he brought a baby lamb
for Maude.
"I thought you'd like this little playmate, sister, you seem to be alone
so much. This baby doesn't know how to nibble grass yet and you'll have
to get mamma to show you how to bring him up."
[Illustration]
Maude was delighted with her present. Her mother took a baby's
nurse-bottle and filled it with sweet new milk and in a very short time
Lambkin could take, through the rubber tube, all the milk his kind
friends would give him.
Maude and her pet made a pretty picture playing together in the meadow.
Nora, who worked in the kitchen, used to sing an odd little song, some
of the words being,
"Little lamb, little lamb,
Will you leave your old dam
And sit with me by the nursery fire?
You shall have bread and milk,
And a cushion of silk,
And a cradle as soft as a lamb could desire.
"No! no, little child
I'd rather run wild
And play all the day by the side of my dam;
For we love one another
Like you and your mother
And she'd cry all the day for the loss of her lamb."