A girl of twelve, from the city, spending the summer in the country, wishes
to go down to the river to join her brothers there, but is stopped by
observing a cow in a field which she has to cross. She comes back to the
house, and is there laughed at for her foolishness in being; "afraid of a
cow!"

But why should she not be afraid of a cow? She has heard stories of people
being gored by bulls, and sometimes by cows, and she has no means whatever
of estimating the reality or the extent of the danger in any particular
case. The farmer's daughters, however, who laugh at her, know the cow in
question perfectly well. They have milked her, and fed her, and tied her up
to her manger a hundred times; so, while it would be a very foolish thing
for them to be afraid to cross a field where the cow was feeding, it is a
very sensible thing for the stranger-girl from the city to be so.

Nor would it certainly change the case much for the child, if the farmer's
girls were to assure her that the cow was perfectly peaceable, and that
there was no danger; for she does not know the girls any better than she
does the cow, and can not judge how far their statements or opinions are to
be relied upon. It may possibly not be the cow they think it is. They are
very positive, it is true; but very positive people are often mistaken.
Besides, the cow may be peaceable with them, and yet be disposed to attack
a stranger. What a child requires in such a case is sympathy and help, not
ridicule.

[Illustration: AFRAID OF THE COW.]

This, in the case supposed, she meets in the form of the farmer's son, a
young man browned in face and plain in attire, who comes along while she
stands loitering at the fence looking at the cow, and not daring after all,