Reading multiple lines in Bourne Shell

I'm trying to read two lines into two variables. In Bash I would use something like this: cat myfile line1 line2 EOF cat myfile | { read firstline echo $firstline # "line1" in bash and sh read secondline } echo $firstline # "line1" in bash, empty in sh echo $secondline In Bourne Shell however $firstline and $secondline are empty outside the command group. How can I do it in sh?