MARY'S LITTLE LAMB 127 



miles ; by that time the precious shirt had dwindled 

 to something quite small — nothing in fact was 

 left but the hard starched front, which the guanaco 

 found it difficult to masticate and swallow. Then 

 at long last the hunt was given up and my poor 

 shirtless friend in his towel rode mournfully home 

 in the midst of laughing companions, attended, too, 

 by a lot of dogs, lolling their tongues out and over- 

 flowingly happy at having had such an exciting run. 

 Let me now come to the subject I sat down to 

 write about — namely, Mary's little lamb. It was 

 little to begin with, when my youngest sister, who 

 was not then very big herself, and was always 

 befriending forlorn creatures, came in one day 

 from the shepherd's ranch with a young lamb 

 which had unhappily lost its mother. Oddly 

 enough this little sister's name was Mary — one 

 seldom hears it in these Doris, Doreen days, but 

 in that distant Mary -Jane-Elizabeth period it was 

 quite common. And the motherless lamb she had 

 brought in grew to be her pet lamb, with fleece 

 as white as snow ; nor was the whiteness strange 

 seeing that it was washed every day with scented 

 soap, its beauteous neck beribboned and often 

 decorated with garlands of scarlet verbenas which 

 looked exceedingly brilliant against the snowy fleece. 

 A pretty, sweet-tempered and gentle creature it 

 proved and never developed any naughty proclivi- 

 ties like the tobacco- and book-plundering sheep of 

 an earlier date. They were very fond of each 

 other, those two simple beings, and just as in the 



