“It won’t be very pleasant to have to hold my hand in the pan of milk every time Susy wants to eat. I think we ought to wean her at once from a bad habit like that,” was Janet’s comment
“It is much like having a baby that sucks its thumb when it is hungry. But there is no aftermath with a calf while there are adnoids, dwarfed arch in the mouth, enlarged tonsils, and many other serious things that develop from thumb, or nipple sucking. I never see a child with a so-called ‘mother’s comfort’ in its mouth that I do not want to scream at the ignorant woman who allows it.”
“Well, Jimmy, I never knew that myself. I do not believe it is ignorance so much, as that one woman hears another one commend a rubber comfort for the baby to keep it quiet, so they use it.”
“What do you call that if it is not ignorance! Why does not the mother make sure that the sucking is safe before she gives the child the habit that is so difficult to break. I don’t blame the poor child, but it is the one that pays the penalty for the mother’s carelessness. If it were the mother who had to pay in physical pain and weakness the price of that ‘comfort’ sucking maybe there would be more mothers willing to hear the baby cry, or to take it up to soothe it.”
Belle had never heard of the dangers of rubber sucking for babies, but she then and there determined to warn every mother she met who allowed her baby to hold a “comfort” between its lips.
During the interest in their subject, Janet and Mrs. James stood a short distance from the others who were still playing with Susy. But quite suddenly, without due warning of her intentions, the calf resented the pulling of her curly hair on top of her head, and kicked out with her heels.
Fortunately no one was in line with the kick, but the girls shrieked and backed pell-mell away from Susy. Then she, beginning to cut capers as she did the day before, rushed to the end of the tether and pulled on it as if to loosen it. But it held.
Before the girls could get out of the way, Susy began to race in a circle just as great in circumference as the rope permitted. And circling wildly around and around, she wound the swiftly winding rope about the feet of the group watching her. In another moment they had been tripped over and were struggling to get out of the noose the rope was making. But Susy kept on circling until the rope was so short that it almost choked her.
Sam came to the rescue of the calf and after he had disentangled her from the rope, he mumbled: “I hopes I am here when Susy goes to de butcher!”
Such a torrent of abuse as that brought down on his head, drove Sam back to the barn to finish the pigeon coop. But that was not the last time Susy played the same trick upon the girls. She generally tripped them over when they were least expecting the playful act, and she invariably ended by snarling herself so completely in the rope that she had to be untangled every time.