“Well, don’t dream any more,” I suggested. “Come down and see to this confounded cow of yours.”
“Oh,” said Veronica, “has it come?”
“It has come,” I told her. “As a matter of fact, it has been here some time. It ought to have been milked four hours ago, according to its own idea.”
Robina said she would be down in a minute.
She was down in twenty-five, which was sooner than I had expected. She brought Veronica with her. She said she would have been down sooner if she had not waited for Veronica. It appeared that this was just precisely what Veronica had been telling her. I was feeling irritable. I had been up half a day, and hadn’t had my breakfast.
“Don’t stand there arguing,” I told them. “For goodness’ sake let’s get to work and milk this cow. We shall have the poor creature dying on our hands if we’re not careful.”
Robina was wandering round the room.
“You haven’t come across a milking-stool anywhere, have you, Pa?” asked Robina.
“I have come across your milking-stool, I estimate, some thirteen times,” I told her. I fetched it from where I had left it, and gave it to her; and we filed out in procession; Veronica with a galvanised iron bucket bringing up the rear.
The problem that was forcing itself upon my mind was: did Robina know how to milk a cow? Robina, I argued, the idea once in her mind, would immediately have ordered a cow, clamouring for it—as Hopkins had picturesquely expressed it—as though she had not strength to live another day without a cow. Her next proceeding would have been to buy a milking-stool. It was a tasteful milking-stool, this one she had selected, ornamented with the rough drawing of a cow in poker work: a little too solid for my taste, but one that I should say would wear well. The pail she had not as yet had time to see about. This galvanised bucket we were using was, I took it, a temporary makeshift. When Robina had leisure she would go into the town and purchase something at an art stores. That, to complete the scheme, she would have done well to have taken a few practical lessons in milking would come to her, as an inspiration, with the arrival of the cow. I noticed that Robina’s steps as we approached the cow were less elastic. Just outside the cow Robina halted.