His slumbers that night, in bed-linen fragrant as Ailie Dinmont’s, were deep and dreamless. Surely it could not have been morning, it was so dark, and still raining, when he heard knocking at a window, and a voice thrice repeat the words, ‘Maister Hamilton, are ye awauk?’ but the words melted away—a luxurious drowsiness overpowered his senses. The rain’s measured fall and tinkling plash changed into the mill-wheel dash of his childhood’s wonder in Surrey. When he awoke, the sky was dark, but there was the indefinable sensation that it was not very early. So he dressed, and beholding a large old pair of ‘clodhoppers’ standing temptingly near, he bestowed himself in them and cautiously made towards the milking-yard. He looked across to the enclosure where his cattle had been during the previous night. It was a smooth and apparently deep sea of liquid mud, so sincerely churned had it been during the wet night. He felt grieved for the discomfort of the poor cattle, but relieved to know that they had been hours before on the grass, and were well on their way to Warbrok Chase.
At the milking-yard he saw a sight which had never before met his eyes. The morning’s work had apparently been just completed. Argyll was walking towards the dairy, a pisé building with thick, earthen walls. He carried two immense cans full to the brim with milk. Hamilton was wading through the yard behind about sixty cows and calves, which were stolidly ploughing through a lake of liquid mud. As they quitted the rough stone causeway, they appeared to drop with reluctance into a species of slough. An elderly Scot, approaching the type of Andrew Cargill, was labouring, nearly knee-deep, solemnly after. He and Mr. Hamilton were splashed from head to foot; it would have been a delicate task to recognise either. The latter, coming to a pool of water, deliberately walked in, thus purifying both boot and lower leg.
‘Muddy work, this milking in wet weather,’ said he calmly, scraping a piece of caked mud about the size of a cheese-plate from the breast of his serge shirt. ‘It would need to pay well, for it is exceedingly disagreeable.’
‘Very much so, indeed, I should think,’ assented Wilfred, rather shocked. ‘I had no idea that dairy work on a large scale could be so unpleasant.’
‘Ours is perhaps more mud-larking than most people’s,’ said Mr. Hamilton reflectively, ‘chiefly from the richness of the soil, so we endure it. But you must look into the cheese-room—the bright side of the affair financially.’
Wilfred was much impressed with the dairy, a substantial, thatched edifice, having a verandah on four sides. The pisé walls—nearly two feet thick—were of earth, rammed in a wooden frame after a certain formula.
‘Here is the best building on the station,’ said his guide. ‘We reared this noble pile ourselves, in the days of our colonial inexperience, entirely by the directions contained in a book, with the aid of old Wullie and our emigrant labourers. After we became more “Australian” and “less nice” we took to slabs. It was quicker work, but our architecture suffered.’
In one portion of this building were rows of milk-vessels, while ranged on shelves one above another, and occupying three sides of the building, were hundreds of fair, round, orthodox-looking cheeses, varying in colour from pale yellow to orange. They presented an appearance more akin to a midland county farm than an Australian cattle-station.
‘There, you see the compensation for early rising, wet feet, and mud-plastering. We have a ready sale for twice as many cheeses as Mrs. Teviot can turn out, at a very paying price. Her double Stiltons are famed for their richness and maturity. We pay a large part of the station expenses in this way; besides, what is of more importance, improving the cattle, by keeping the herd quiet and promoting their aptitude to fatten.’
‘You have no sheep, I think?’ inquired Wilfred.