Millie and Robert had just the one cow but soon they had none. Even so Millie said things might have been worse. “It could have been Robert that was taken.” And he said, bearing their loss stoically, “What is to be will be, if it comes in the night.”
It was Millie who first noticed something was wrong with Bossy. It was right after she had found her grazing in the chestnut grove. All the young growth had been cut out and the branches of the trees formed a solid shade so that coming out of the sunlight into the grove Millie blinked and groped in the darkness with hands out before her, feeling her way and calling, “Sook, Bossy! Sook! Sook!” Millie all but stumbled over the cow down on her all fours. She coaxed and patted for a long time before Bossy finally got to her feet and waddled slowly out of the shaded grove into the sunlit meadow.
That evening Robert did the milking. But before he began he stroked Bossy’s nose and bent close. “I’ve caught the stench of her breath!” he cried. “Sniff for yourself, Millie!”
Millie did. “Smells worser’n a dung pile,” she gasped, hand to stomach.
Quick as a flash Robert put the tin pail under Bossy’s bag and began to milk with both hands.
There was scarcely a pint in the bucket until Robert gaped at Millie. “Look! It don’t foam!” His eyes widened with apprehension. He took a silver coin from his pocket, dropped it into the pail and waited. In a few moments he fished it out. “Black as coal!” gasped Robert. “Our cow’s got milk sick!”
Bossy slumped to the ground. By sundown the cow was stark dead.
Before dark Robert himself grew deathly ill.
They remembered that at noon time he had spread a piece of cornbread with Bossy’s butter. He had drunk a cup of her milk.
Millie lost no moment. She mixed mustard in a cup of hot water and Robert downed it almost at a gulp.