“No,” she answered, “it was Susie.”
“It is the one,” I said, “that bellows most all night and three parts of the day. Your boy Hopkins thinks maybe she’s fretting.”
“Poor soul!” said St. Leonard. “We only took her calf away from her—when did we take her calf away from her?” he asked of Janie.
“On Thursday morning,” returned Janie; “the day we sent her over.”
“They feel it so at first,” said St. Leonard sympathetically.
“It sounds a brutal sentiment,” I said, “but I was wondering if by any chance you happened to have by you one that didn’t feel it quite so much. I suppose among cows there is no class that corresponds to what we term our ‘Smart Set’—cows that don’t really care for their calves, that are glad to get away from them?”
Miss Janie smiled. When she smiled, you felt you would do much to see her smile again.
“But why not keep it up at your house, in the paddock,” she suggested, “and have the milk brought down? There is an excellent cowshed, and it is only a mile away.”
It struck me there was sense in this idea. I had not thought of that. I asked St. Leonard what I owed him for the cow. He asked Miss Janie, and she said sixteen pounds. I had been warned that in doing business with farmers it would be necessary always to bargain; but there was that about Miss Janie’s tone telling me that when she said sixteen pounds she meant sixteen pounds. I began to see a brighter side to Hubert St. Leonard’s career as a farmer.
“Very well,” I said; “we will regard the cow as settled.”