Meg was ready to get up and Twaddles woke before Bobby had tied one shoe, so the four little Blossoms, helping each other, managed to be dressed and downstairs before Jud had started to milk.
"Well, if this doesn't seem like old times!" he exclaimed grinning at them as they entered the barn.
"Forgotten how to milk, Meg?" asked Peter Apgar, coming into the dairy barn from feeding the horses. "Want to try it this morning?"
"I don't think I've forgotten how," said Meg cautiously, "but I'd rather Jud milked, 'cause he can do it so much faster than I can; and then he can go round with us and see the things."
That little speech pleased Jud mightily and pleased Peter Apgar, too, because, you will remember, Peter was Jud's father.
"You go sight-seeing this minute, Jud," he ordered his tall son.
"Guess I can do the milking on a special morning like this."
So the four little Blossoms and Jud went to pay their respects to all the dear farm animals the children had known that first summer they spent on Brookside Farm. Carlotta, the calf given to Meg and Bobby, had grown to be a beautiful sleek cow and Meg privately decided she was prettier than any Aunt Polly owned. Jerry and Terry, the two farm horses, acted as though they remembered the small visitors; and as for Mrs. Sally Sweet, Aunt Polly's pet Jersey cow, she came right up to the bars and fairly begged to have her nose stroked.
"Mother will want to see you," said Jud, when they had made the rounds of the barns and poultry yards.
Jud was "as nice as ever," Meg said, and the winter he had spent at an agricultural college had given him more confidence in his own ability. He was as determined as ever, the children found, to be a farmer and a good one.
At Mrs. Peter's neat front door they found Mr. Tom Sparks, a man who sold and bought cattle and who had given Carlotta to Meg and Bobby. He was surprised and delighted to see the four children again and said it was just his usual good luck that had made him drive in that morning; he was going off the next morning on a two weeks' trip to buy cows.