BORROWIN’ JOSIAH.
So I took holt and done the churnin’ myself, and let him go. And he come home perfectly tuckered out. Wasn’t good for nothin’ hardly for several days. He got strained somehow a pullin’ on that carpet. But after that they would send for him real often to help do some job. They both took as much agin liberty with Josiah as they did with me; they worked him down almost to skin and bones. Besides all the rest he suffered. Why, his cow-sufferin’ alone was perfectly awful. They had a cow, a high-headed creeter; as haughty a actin’ cow as I ever see in my life. She would hold her head right up, and walk over our fence, and tramp through the garden. I didn’t know how Josiah felt about it, but I used to think myself that I could have stood it as well agin if it hadn’t been so high headed. It would look so sort o’ independent and overbearin’ at me, when it was a walkin’ through the fence, and tramplin’ through the garden. Josiah always laid out his beds in the garden with a chalk-line, as square and beautiful as the pyramids, and that cow jest leveled ’em to the ground. They tied her up nights, but she would get loose, and start right for our premises; seemed to take right to us, jest as the rest of ’em did. But I held firm, for I see that gettin’ up night after night, and goin’ out in the night air, chasin’ after that cow, was coolin’ off my companion’s affection for the Spinkses.
SPINKS’ES COW—A NIGHT SCENE.
And then they kept the awfulest sight of hens. I know Josiah was dretful tickled with the idee at first, and said, “mebby we could swap with ’em, get into their kind of hens.”
And I told him in a cautious way “that I shouldn’t wonder a mite if we did.”
OUR HEN-DAIRY.
OUR HEN-DAIRY.
Wall, them hens seemed to feel jest as the rest of the family did; didn’t seem to want to stay to home a minute, but flocked right over onto us; stayed right by us day and night; would hang round our doors and door-steps, and come into the house every chance they could get, daytimes; and nights, would roost right along on the door-yard fence, and the front porch, and the lilack bushes, and the pump. Why, the story got out that we was keepin’ a hen-dairy, and strangers who thought of goin’ into the business would stop and holler to Josiah, and ask him if he found it profitable to keep so many hens. And I’d see that man shakin’ his fist at ’em, after they would go on, he would be that mad at ’em. Somehow the idee of keepin’ a hen-dairy was always dretful obnoxious to Josiah, though it is perfectly honorable, as far as I can see.