"You will surely come back next winter!" we shouted after him as he drove away.
"Maybe," he said, and would not trust himself to look back.
The old sitting-room seemed wholly deserted that Friday night after he went away. "We are like sheep without a shepherd," Theodora said. Catherine and Tom came over. We opened our Latin books and tried to study awhile; but 'twas dreary without "old Joel."
Other things, however, other duties and other work at the farm immediately occupied our attention. It was now mid-January and there was ice to be cut on the lake for our new creamery.
For three years the old Squire had been breeding a herd of Jerseys. There were sixteen of them: Jersey First, Canary, Jersey Second, Little Queen, Beauty, Buttercup, and all the rest. Each one had her own little book that hung from its nail on a beam of the tie-up behind her stall. In it were recorded her pedigree, dates, and the number of pounds of milk she gave at each milking. The scales for weighing the milk hung from the same beam. We weighed each milking, and jotted down the weight with the pencil tied to each little book. All this was to show which of the herd was most profitable, and which calves had better be kept for increase.
This was a new departure in Maine farming. Cream-separators were as yet undreamed of. A water-creamery with long cans and ice was then used for raising the cream; and that meant an ice-house and the cutting and hauling home of a year's stock of ice from the lake, nearly two miles distant.
We built a new ice-house near the east barn in November; and in December the old Squire drove to Portland and brought home a complete kit of tools—three ice-saws, an ice-plow or groover, ice-tongs, hooks, chisels, tackle and block.
Everything had to be bought new, but the old Squire had visions of great profits ahead from his growing herd of Jerseys. Grandmother, however, was less sanguine.
It was unusually cold in December that year, frequently ten degrees below zero, and there were many high winds. Consequently, the ice on the lake thickened early to twelve inches, and bade fair to go to two feet. For use in a water-creamery, ice is most conveniently cut and handled when not more than fifteen or sixteen inches thick. That thickness, too, when the cakes are cut twenty-six inches square, as usual, makes them quite heavy enough for hoisting and packing in an ice-house.
Half a mile from the head of the lake, over deep, clear water, we had been scraping and sweeping a large surface after every snow, in order to have clear ice. Two or three times a week Addison ran down and tested the thickness; and when it reached fifteen inches, we bestirred ourselves at our new work.