Then I looked at Dolly’s eyes again. I could not resist them. I recalled the age-old story of the maiden changed to a heifer by a jealous god. I noticed for the first time a look of imprisoned sadness in her eyes. There was a gadfly in that story too, I remembered, and it drove her into the sea. Unlike mortals, Dolly has evidently developed an immunity to gadflies.
What wonderful old stories those are! How young the world was, and how it has changed! All but Dolly; she is as she was, grazing on the slopes of Olympus. It is man who has hurried and worried himself from change to change until he can no longer see the beauty of the simple, lovely, unchanged thing.
How cool the breeze, how sweet the odor of the grass! The restless spring has passed. The year has grown; and now the full accomplishment of summer meets the eye. The season pauses, and for a few matchless weeks we see no change. Nature rests; her work is well-nigh done, and you are free to see it all if you will only look.
Dolly rose to her feet and turned slowly toward the bars. No need to clang the hour in jangling notes from tawdry towers; Dolly has met the tryst at the meadow gate ever since Pan piped the shepherd’s flocks to madness. I rose too, and we went together to the gate. I let down the bars and we stepped through. She stopped to crop a tuft of grass. I slid my arm over her neck, and through the meadow where I fled in haste we walked side by side with measured tread toward the sweet-smelling barn.
The demands of my small estate are modest, but I employ the services of one associate and fellow worker. He must be a man of varied talents and tireless industry and above all, for my entire satisfaction, he must be gifted with a sense of values, a feeling for the fitness of things. This is hard to find.
I hate to make a change, but occasionally it has to be done, and that involves the ordeal of interviewing applicants, a duty I loathe and perform badly. The interview always changes from an inquiry into the applicant’s fitness for the place into a lengthy apology on my part for the duties imposed. I have the courage, however, to make my decision hang on his answers to two questions. When last struggling with this problem I was called upon by a brisk young man who impressed me tremendously. He seemed the sort of person who would romp through his day’s work by noon and have the rest of the time to devote to the small details never attended to properly with me. I had made up my mind to entrust myself to his masterful direction. I paused before applying the final test; I eyed him narrowly.
“Do you milk?” I asked.
A deprecatory smile flittered across his face; that was all. The question was too absurd to require a verbal answer.
“Do you milk—reverently?” I asked.
“In my last place,” he answered, “we milked by electricity.”