Then she called cheerily to her milkmaids: “Come, girls, the cows are in the paddock and it is milking time! Fetch the new pails and fetch also my milking stool. Let us get at our task before the daylight fades.”
The milkmaids came—three young serving-girls, rosy-faced, red-lipped, and ruddy with health. Methinks I see them even now, tripping lightly from the doorway, each with a [[273]]sweet-smelling cedar-wood pail, and the foremost with a three-legged stool for the mistress.
Along the garden walk, between rows of blue and yellow flowers, they pass joyously. In their blue gowns and white aprons, their long braided hair falling far down their backs—how handsome they are! The wife and helpmate goes before, queenly as when men called her the Maid of Beauty. Anniki, the sister, comes after, thirsty and impatient for the cup of fresh and frothing milk. They walk across the farmyard; they open the great gate into the paddock; they enter and look around them.
“Ha! how sleek the milkers are to-night!” says the wife and helpmate. “Their hides shine as though they had been rubbed down with lynx-skin brushes and smoothed with lamb’s wool dipped in oil.”
“And how full they are!” says Anniki, the sister. “They have eaten so much they can hardly breathe. Surely the slave boy knows where to find the best pastures for the herd.”
“Yes, and see how large their udders are!” says one of the milkmaids. “Methinks our pails are too small to contain such quantities of milk. The whole milk-house will be flooded.” [[274]]
“But look!” suddenly cries the second milkmaid. “What ails the yearlings? They stare at us so and their eyes glow like balls of fire.”
“Oh, I am afraid! I am afraid!” whispers the third milkmaid, shrinking back into the shadows.
The brave mistress laughs at her fears. “It is only the light of the setting sun shining in their eyes,” she says. “Surely no harm can come from these gentle creatures.”
But sister Anniki shivers with cold and draws nearer, her cheeks pale and her limbs trembling.