"I've kep' it up better this year. The rains come along more favorable and the weeds didn't get ahead of me the way they did last winter. Look out, there!" he cried, as Mr. Anthony laid his hand on the head of a Jersey calf that backed awkwardly from under his grasp. "Don't let her get a hold of your coat-tail; she chawed mine to a frazzle the other day; the girls pet her so much she has no manners."
When the tour of the little farm was finished the two men came back to the veranda, and Erastus drew a rocking-chair from the front room for his guest. It was hung with patchwork cushions of "crazy" design, but Mr. Anthony leaned his tired head against them in the sanest content.
"Now you just sit still a minute," Erastus said, "and I'm a-going to bring you something you hain't tasted for a long time."
He darted into the house, and returned with a pitcher and two glasses.
"Sweet cider!" he announced, with a triumphant smile. "I had a lot of apples in the fall, not big enough to peddle,—you know our apples ain't anything to brag of,—and I just rigged up a kind of hand-press in the back yard, and now and then I press out a pitcher of cider for Sunday. I never let it get the least bit hard; not that I don't like a little tang to it myself, but mother belongs to the W.C.T.U., and it'd worry her."
He darted into the house again, and emerged with a plate of brown twisted cakes.
"Mother usually makes cookies on Saturday, but I can't find anything but these doughnuts. Maybe they won't go bad with the cider."
He poured his guest a glass, and Mr. Anthony drank it, holding a doughnut in one hand, and partaking of it with evident relish.
"It's good, Burson," he said. "May I have another glass and another doughnut?"
His host's countenance fairly shone with delighted hospitality as he replenished the empty glass. There were crumbs on the floor when the visitor left, and flies buzzed about the empty plate and pitcher as Mrs. Burson and her daughters came up the steps.