"Get up, ye lazy guid-for-naething! I'll come wi' a stick to ye!"
But the moon did not come down. On the contrary, she made no sign. Kit laughed. He had to stop in the snow to do it. The imitation of his aunt pleased him. He fancied himself climbing up a rung-ladder to the moon, with a broomstick in his hand. He would start that old moon, if he fell down and broke his neck. Kit was hungry now. It was a long time since supper. Porridge is, no doubt, good feeding; but it vanishes away like the morning cloud, and leaves behind it only an aching void. Kit felt the void, but he could not help it. Instead, however, of dwelling upon it, his mind was full of queer thoughts and funny imaginings. It is a strange thing that the thought of rattling on the ribs of a lazy, sleepy moon with a besom-shank pleased him as much as a plate of porridge and as much milk as he could sup to it. But that was the fact.
Kit went next into the stable to get a lantern. The horses were moving about restlessly, but Kit had nothing to do with them. He went in only to get a lantern. It was on the great wooden corn-crib in the corner. Kit lighted it, and pulled down his cap over his ears.
Then he crossed over to the cattle-sheds. The snow was crisp under foot. His feet went through the light drift which had fallen during the night, and crackled frostily upon the older and harder crust. At the barn, Kit paused to put fresh straw in his iron-shod clogs. Fresh straw every morning in the bottom of one's clogs is a great luxury. It keeps the feet warm. Who can afford a new sole of fleecy wool every morning to his shoe? Kit could, for straw is cheap, and even his aunt did not grudge a handful. Not that it would have mattered if she had.
The cattle rattled their chains in a friendly and companionable way as he crossed the yard, Tyke following a little more sedately than before. Kit's first morning job was to fodder the cattle. He went to the hay-mow and carried a great armful of fodder, filling the manger before the bullocks, and giving each a friendly pat as he went by. Great Jock, the bull in the pen by himself in the corner, pushed a moist nose over the bars, and dribbled upon Kit with slobbering affection. Kit put down his head and pretended to run at him, whereat Jock, whom nobody else dared go near, beamed upon him with the solemn affection of "bestial"—his great eyes shining in the light of the lamp with unlovely but genuine affection.
Then came the cows' turn. Kit Kennedy took a milking-pail, which he would have called a luggie, set his knee to Crummie, his favourite, who was munching her fodder, and soon had a warm draught. He pledged her in her own milk, wishing her good health and many happy returns. Then, for his aunt's sake, he carefully wiped the luggie dry, and set it where he had found it. He had got his breakfast—no mean or poor one.
But he did not doubt that he was, as his aunt had said, "a lazy, deceitful, thieving hound."
Kit Kennedy came out of the byre, and trudged away out over the field at the back of the barn, to the sheep in the park. He heard one of them cough as a human being does behind his hand. The lantern threw dancing reflections on the snow. Tyke grovelled and rolled in the light drift, barking loudly. He bit at his own tail. Kit set down the lantern, and fell upon him for a tussle. The two of them had rolled one another into a snowdrift in exactly ten seconds, from which they rose glowing with heat—the heat of young things when the blood runs fast. Tyke, being excited, scoured away wildly, and circled the park at a hand-gallop before his return. But Kit only lifted the lantern and made for the turnip-pits.
The turnip-cutter stood there, with great square mouth black against the sky. That mouth must be filled. Kit went to the end of the barrow-like mound of the turnip-pit. It was covered with snow, so that it hardly showed above the level of the field. Kit threw back the coverings of old sacks and straw which kept the turnips from the frost. There lay the great green-and-yellow globes full of sap. The snow fell upon them from the top of the pit. The frost grasped them without. It was a chilly job to handle them, but Kit did not hesitate a moment.
He filled his arms with them, and went to the turnip-cutter. Soon the crunch, crunch of the knives was to be heard as Kit drove round the handle, and afterwards the frosty sound of the square finger-lengths of cut turnip falling into the basket. The sheep had gathered about him, silently for the most part. Tyke sat still and dignified now, guarding the lantern, which the sheep were inclined to butt over. Kit heard the animals knocking against the empty troughs with their hard little trotters, and snuffing about them with their nostrils.