She was no longer afraid of cows.

Presently, as if with one consent, they all made up their minds to relieve the tedium of the contemplative life by an exhibition of humor, and, scrambling out of the water, proceeded to canter along the bank with stiff raised tails, with an artificial noose sustained with difficulty just above the tuft.
"How like James and the Pratts!" Hester said to herself, watching the grotesque gambols and nudgings of the dwindling humorists.

"It must be very fatiguing to be so comic." Hester had been up since five o'clock, utilizing the quiet hours before the house was astir.

She was tired out.

A bumblebee was droning sleepily near at hand.