“You ought to get on with stock,” the expert remarked, sincerely. “Come to me when you start for yourself and I’ll give you a bargain on some better than these, if nothing happens.”
Billy looked at the square, curly little beasts
as a cripple stares at an athlete’s cup. Then he found all his wandering ambitions coming to a point. Some day he would have a herd of such cattle. He could see their perfect black shapes moving over a sunny field when the autumn frosts had turned the trees and pastures to a glorious gold and crimson background. They would be his, and when he had some of them graded up to a show standard, he himself would groom their curly hides till they shone; he could almost feel the shaking muscles of their broad, level backs as they stood under the hands of the judges. And there would be a house with red curtains and an open fire, where his mother would be safe and comfortable as long as she lived. He fervently hoped his father’s business would continue to take him away from home a lot.
At night he sat up late over a borrowed Aberdeen-Angus history. He sketched over all the paper in the house to show how certain individuals he had seen that day compared with types illustrated. He estimated with reckless optimism what it would cost to start a herd, and how long it would take them to pay for a house with a fireplace and red curtains. At intervals he would get up and walk around the table to work off his enthusiasm. There was nothing reserved about his plans now. His mother felt that her cup was full. She was sure her prayers
for his direction had been answered and she blessed “that agricultural young man” as an agent sent by Heaven.
CHAPTER V.
“What is a butterfly? At best
She’s but a caterpillar, drest.”—Benjamin Franklin.
The dreams of our youth are long in coming true. When at last they do arrive we have worked so hard for them, watched them grow from such humble, unpromising beginnings, come through so much commonplace, grinding routine, that we do not recognize them as the reality of the vision that carried us up to the clouds years before.
The more definite Billy’s ideal became, the farther it receded, until at last it seemed so impossible that he said little about it. The only man whom he hoped to believe in it was the District Representative. He had helped him in the selection of a flock of sheep to trim down the rough corners of the neglected farm. He had used his influence to get him credit on a bunch of shaggy, bony calves to turn into the waste places in the spring, and had been the first person to laugh with him over the cheque in the fall. He had initiated him in the art of mixing cement, with the result that the stables, the cellar and the porch around the house were made dry and solid. He had surveyed for drains through a field that
had never grown much but bulrushes, and Billy had another two acres of black loam added to his tillable area. Oh, he was an all-round man, that Representative, with the tentacles of his office reaching out to a thousand sources for help, and placing it to the best of his knowledge wherever anyone in his territory wanted it.