"I've seed worse'n a hant, Aunt Ailsie," he said, with awful solemnity: "I've seed six able-bodied women, not nary one of which is able to milk a cow-brute!"
Aunt Ailsie dropped her bucket. "Jeems!" she said, "you know hit hain't the truth!"
"Hit's the truth, too," he replied, sternly. "When milking-time come, not nary one of 'em would even try but one,—that air newest and youngest,—and she couldn't squeeze out a drap! And then a leetle chap that was hanging around, he sot down and milked out a bucketful easy as scat!"
Aunt Ailsie picked the bucket up, and stood by the bars, speechless.
"I never once thought but what every woman on that hill was a able milker," she said at last. "But look-a-here, Jeems, all hope hain't yet gone; they would any or all larn to milk if needcessity come—say if any of 'em was to marry a widow-man!"
Jeems shook his head most emphatically. "They wouldn't, neither," he said. "Them women all allowed hit was a man's job, not a woman's, to milk a cow-brute; and one of them head-women said she was aiming to teach all the women-folks in this here country not to milk nary 'nother time theirselves, but to make the men-folks do hit allus."
Jeems's voice broke on the utterance of this frightful heresy, and Aunt Ailsie herself was entirely beyond speech.
After a long while she recovered herself, and laid down the bars. "Well, hit jest wa'n't to be, Jeems," she said; "hit just wa'n't predestyned for you to get you a fotched-on woman. I don't know but what, if I was you, I'd court that air widow-woman, Cindy Swope. Her six and your nine, with maybe seven or eight more to foller, will be kindly a stumbling-block; but if she can quell both young-uns and cow-brutes, like you say, numbers won't make no p'ticlar difference—you'll still have peace in your home. I reckon hit's the best all round, Jeems; though I feel mighty onreconciled, atter all the big plans I laid for you. You hain't the first man to look furder and fare worse."
She threw half a dozen nubbins to Old Pied, sat down on the small three-legged stool, and began to milk, vigorously but pensively.
Jeems gazed down upon her, with healing and comfort stealing over every torn and jangled nerve.