"Announced by all the trumpets of the sky
Arrives the snow"--
or the blizzard?
But going back to town, as she intimated, concerns the children quite as much as me. They travel eight miles a day to get to school, part of it on foot and part of it by street car—and were absent one day last year when the telephone wires were down and we thought there would be no school because of the snow. They might not have missed that one day had we been in the city, and I must think of that when it comes time to go back. There is room for them in the city to improve in spelling and penmanship too, vastly to improve. But they could n't have half so much fun there as here, nor half so many things to do, simple, healthful, homely, interesting things to do, as good for them as books and food and sleep—these last things to be had here, too, in great abundance.
What could take the place of the cow and hens in the city? The hens are Mansie's (he is the oldest) and the cow is mine. But night after night last winter I would climb the Hill to see the barn lighted, and in the shadowy stall two little human figures—one squat on an upturned bucket milking, his milk-pail, too large to be held between his knees, lodged perilously under the cow upon a half-peck measure; the other little human figure quietly holding the cow's tail.
No head is turned; not a squeeze is missed—this is business here in the stall,—but as the car stops behind the scene, Babe calls—
"Hello, Father!"
"Hello, Babe!"
"Three teats done," calls Mansie, his head down, butting into the old cow's flank. "You go right in, we 'll be there. She has n't kicked but once!"
Perhaps that is n't a good thing for those two little boys to do—watering, feeding, brushing, milking the cow on a winter night in order to save me—and loving to! Perhaps that is n't a good thing for me to see them doing, as I get home from the city on a winter night!
But I am a sentimentalist and not proof at all against two little boys milking, who are liable to fall into the pail.