“Why, she’s just a-holdin’ her head over the bars, an’ a-bawlin’! Tryin’ to get into the little correll where her ca’f is! I wish paw ’d of done as I told him an’ put her into the up meadow. If there’s anything on earth I abominate it’s to hear a cow bawl.”
Mrs. Bridges gathered up several sticks of wood from the box in the corner by the stove, and going out into the yard, threw them with powerful movements of her bare arm in the direction of the bars. The cow lowered her hornless head and shook it defiantly at her, but held her ground. Isaphene stood in the open door, laughing. She was making a cake. She beat the mixture with a long-handled tin spoon while watching the fruitless attack. She had reddish brown hair that swept away from her brow and temples in waves so deep you could have lost your finger in any one of them; and good, honest gray eyes, and a mouth that was worth kissing. She wore a blue cotton gown that looked as if it had just left the ironing-table. Her sleeves were rolled to her elbows.
“It don’t do any good, maw,” she said, as her mother returned with a defeated air. “She just bawls an’ shakes her head right in your face. Look at her!”
“Oh, I don’t want to look at her. It seems to me your paw might of drove her to the up meadow, seein’s he was goin’ right up by there. It ain’t like as if he’d of had to go out o’ his way. It aggravates me offul.”
She threw the last stick of wood into the box, and brushed the tiny splinters off her arm and sleeves.
“Well, I guess I might as well string them beans for dinner before I clean up.”
She took a large milkpan, filled with beans, from the table and sat down near the window.
“Isaphene,” she said, presently, “what do you say to an organ, an’ a horse an’ buggy? A horse with some style about him, that you could ride or drive, an’ that ’u’d always be up when you wanted to go to town!”
“What do I say?” The girl turned and looked at her mother as if she feared one of them had lost her senses; then she returned to her cake-beating with an air of good-natured disdain.
“Oh, you can smile an’ turn your head on one side, but you’ll whistle another tune before long—or I’ll miss my guess. Isaphene, I’ve been savin’ up chicken an’ butter money ever since we come to Puget Sound; then I’ve always got the money for the strawberry crop, an’ for the geese an’ turkeys, an’ the calves, an’ so on. Your paw’s been real good about such things.”