I dismissed him. What a preposterous idea! I would as soon cultivate my roses with a caterpillar tractor.
The next applicant was an inefficient-looking elderly man with kind eyes. He had nice wrinkles. I count a great deal on wrinkles.
I asked him the crucial question. For one moment he searched my very soul with twinkling eyes.
“I try to,” he said.
And so the Incomparable One came.
As Dolly and I pass the rose trellis behind which I had skulked an hour before, I square my shoulders and walk upright like a man. Here Cerberus joins us. He rubs a cool, moist nose in the palm of my hand and trots quietly beside me.
Two khaki-clad little figures appear from the house, carrying between them a glittering pail. The Incomparable One springs from the earth somewhere, and we all meet on the gravel path before the door.
The Incomparable One, with a broken riding-crop as his badge and insignia of rank, takes my place and gently directs Dolly’s progress. We fall behind and wait outside till Dolly has drunk her fill and is standing in her accustomed place. Once, pail in hand, I had preceded her, but my error had been made plain to me, and I never transgressed again.
Dolly now in place, the Incomparable One returns. With hands and arms glistening from recent soapy ablutions, he takes the pail and holds it to the sun. He examines every inch of it critically and with deliberate care. The process is always observed by an Hibernian lady from a kitchen window with whole-hearted disapproval. This daily episode is the only incident in a busy life in which my perfect servitor is not the very flower of tact and discretion.
His examination complete, we go where Dolly waits. He takes his place on gently tilted stool; we stand one side. He pulls his rolled-back sleeves an inch higher, his great firm hands are rubbed together, and then the fingers flex in smooth preparatory exercises. He leans forward and gently touches each teat in turn. From each he pulls a tiny lactic stream and lets it fall upon the clean rye straw beneath his feet. This is not done because—as held by some—the first milk contains more impurities than the rest; it is a libation, a propitiatory offering to whatever god there be who presides over the destinies of cattle and impecunious rural sentimentalists.