I made a note: “Cow, sixteen pounds. Have the cowshed got ready, and buy one of those big cans on wheels.”
“You don’t happen to want milk?” I put it to Miss Janie. “Susie seems to be good for about five gallons a day. I’m afraid if we drink it all ourselves we’ll get too fat.”
“At twopence halfpenny a quart, delivered at the house, as much as you like,” replied Miss Janie.
I made a note of that also. “Happen to know a useful boy?” I asked Miss Janie.
“What about young Hopkins,” suggested her father.
“The only male thing on this farm—with the exception of yourself, of course, father dear—that has got any sense,” said Miss Janie. “He can’t have Hopkins.”
“The only fault I have to find with Hopkins,” said St. Leonard, “is that he talks too much.”
“Personally,” I said, “I should prefer a country lad. I have come down here to be in the country. With Hopkins around, I don’t somehow feel it is the country. I might imagine it a garden city: that is as near as Hopkins would allow me to get. I should like myself something more suggestive of rural simplicity.”
“I think I know the sort of thing you mean,” smiled Miss Janie. “Are you fairly good-tempered?”
“I can generally,” I answered, “confine myself to sarcasm. It pleases me, and as far as I have been able to notice, does neither harm nor good to anyone else.”