Indulgent laughter came from all the men. I remembered one of Elizabeth's contemptuous axioms about the sex—"a pretty girl can't be too helpless or too afraid of mice to please a man, even now!"
Elizabeth, at this moment sitting beside the cow, Blodwen, wore her most man-hating looks upon her small, set face. As for me, I felt that now, on this occasion of all others, when, as a Land-worker, I ought to have been at my best, I was absolutely at my worst, nervous, flurried and awkward.
I had a hideous presentiment that I should overturn my milking-pail, or some fiasco of that sort!
Raging inwardly, I approached the black-and-white cow who had become my friend. She was the easiest in the stable, as Mrs. Price had said on that first time of all when I had milked her. But now, to my horror, I realized that she was going to fidget and to be difficult. She was going to "let me down" before all these people!
Suddenly I heard Captain Holiday's voice, not brusque as usual, but quiet.
"I say, Muriel, my child," he said, "stand outside the door, will you? If strangers go and stand close up to the cow when she's being milked she gets bad-tempered and there's no doing anything with her."
"Oh, isn't there? I didn't know. I'm so sorry," said Muriel, airily, and she fluttered out to stand beside Colonel Fielding.
Feeling grateful beyond words to the man who had helped me thus, I went on milking with more assurance. The nervous flurry melted away from me. I succeeded in forgetting that I was doing what I was with a maximum of so many marks for "approach," for "time," for "quantity," for "clean-stripping."
I forgot Mrs. Elvey's lorgnette upon me from the cow-house door; and the eyes of the others, and the chatter of Muriel to the two young men.
I just did the best I could.