When she reached the door, she stood for a moment on the threshold,
and, putting her hand over her eyes, shouted "_Annie_!" But, apparently
startled at the sound of her own voice where the unhearing dead had so
lately passed, she let the end of the call die away in a quaver, and,
without repeating it, set off to find the missing child by the use of
her eyes alone. First she went into the barn, and then through the barn
into the stack-yard, and then round the ricks one after another, and
then into the corn-loft; but all without avail. At length, as she was
beginning to feel rather alarmed about the child, she arrived, in the
progress of her search, at the door of one of the cow-houses. The
moment she looked round the corner into the stall next the door, she
stood stock-still, with her mouth wide open. This stall was occupied by
a favourite cow--brown, with large white spots, called therefore
_Brownie_. Her manger was full of fresh-cut grass; and half-buried in
this grass, at one end of the manger, with her back against the wall,
sat Annie, holding one of the ears of the hornless Brownie with one
hand and stroking the creature's nose with the other.
She was a delicate child, about nine years old, with blue eyes, half
full of tears, hair somewhere between dark and fair, gathered in a silk
net, and a pale face, on which a faint moon-like smile was glimmering.
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