“Why,” said Raymond, “we could find six hundred dairy cows in this neighborhood, within an hour’s drive.”
“Six hundred!” scoffed Newton. “You’re crazy! In an hour’s drive?”
“I mean an hour’s drive each way,” said Raymond.
“I believe we could,” said Jim. “And after we find how far we will have to go to get enough cows, if half of them patronized the creamery, we’ll work over the savings the business would make, if we could get the prices for butter paid the Wisconsin cooperative creameries, as compared with what the centralizers pay us, on a basis of the last six months. Who’s in possession of that correspondence with the Wisconsin creameries?”
“I have it,” said Raymond. “I’m hectographing a lot of arithmetic problems from it.”
“How do you do, Mr. Irwin!” It was the superintendent who spoke.
Jim’s brain whirled little prismatic clouds before his vision, as he rose and shook Jennie’s extended hand.
“Let me give you a chair,” said he.
“Oh, no, thank you!” she returned. “I’ll just make myself at home. I know my way about in this schoolhouse, you know!”
She smiled at the children, and went about looking at their work—which was not noticeably disturbed, by reason of the fact that visitors were much more frequent now than ever before, and were no rarity. Certainly, Jennie Woodruff was no novelty, since they had known her all their lives. Most of the embarrassment was Jim’s. He rose to the occasion, however, went through the routine of the closing day, and dismissed the flock, not omitting making an engagement with a group of boys for that evening to come back and work on the formalin treatment for smut in seed grains, and the blue-vitriol treatment for seed potatoes.