How those old bare walls and high beams would resound! Blar-r-rt! Blaw-ar-ar-ah-ahrt! Blah-ah-aht! Bul-ar-ah-ahrt! There were eager little altos, soaring sopranos, high and importunate tenors that rose to the roof and drowned the twitter of the happy barn-swallows.
Addison, Halstead, Theodora and Ellen, who had come to the farm before me, knew all the calves by sight and had named them. There was Little Star, Phil Sheridan, Black Betty, Hooker, Nut, Little Dagon, Andy Johnson and Babe. I do not recollect the others, but have particular reason to remember Little Dagon.
At the time I made the acquaintance of this broad-headed Hereford calf he was five weeks old, and the soft buds of his horns were beginning to show in the curly hair of his forehead. His color was dark red, except for a milk-white face, two white feet, a white tassel on his tail, and a little belt of white under his body. Grandfather had unexpectedly sold this calf's mother, a fine, large, line-backed cow, to a friend at the village on that very morning.
The old gentleman kindly showed me how to milk and how to hold the pail, then gave me a milking-stool and sat me down to milk "Lily-Whiteface." She was not a hard milker, but it did seem to me that after I had extracted about three quarts of milk, my hands were getting paralyzed. Halstead, who sat milking a few yards away, had, meanwhile, been adding to my troubles by squirting streams of milk at my left ear, till Gramp caught him in the act and bade him desist.
The old gentleman presently finished with his two cows, and went away with his buckets of milk toward the house. Then, with soothing guile which I had not yet learned to detect, Halstead offered to finish milking my cow for me. I was glad to accept the offer. My untrained fingers were aching so painfully that I could now hardly draw a drop of milk. My knees, too, were tremulous from my efforts to clasp the pail between them.
"It made mine ache at first," said Halstead with comforting sympathy as he sat down on my stool and took my pail between his knees. I stood gratefully by, and after a few moments he looked up and said, "While I finish milking your cow, you run over to the west barn and get Little Dagon. He is dreadfully hungry. His mother was sold this morning, and we have got to teach him to drink his milk to-night."
"He had better not try to lead that calf!" Addison called out from his stool, at a distance.
"Why not?" Halse exclaimed. "Oh, he can lead him all right. All he has to do is to untie the calf's rope from the staple in the barn post. He will come right along, himself."
It seemed very simple as Halstead put it, and I started off at once. Addison said no more; he gave me an odd look as I hastened past him, but I hardly noticed it at the time.
Little Dagon was making the rafters re-echo as I entered the bay. When he saw me, he jumped to the end of his rope and fairly went into the air. He had sucked the bow-knot of the rope till it was as slippery as if soaped, and when I strove to untie it, he grabbed my hands in his mouth. At length I untied him and then with a clatter on the loose boards, we went out of the hay-bay, pranced across the barn floor and out at the great doors.