"Oh, you brat, you are stealing all the milk!" Dixie cried. She picked up a dried corn-stalk, and with it belabored the sleek, brown back of the calf, but she might as well have used an ostrich-plume for all the effect it had on the hungry animal.
It was then that Henley, laughing heartily, sprang over the fence and came to her assistance.
"Let me have the little scamp," he said. And he bent down and took the squirming beast into his strong arms and lifted it bodily from the ground. "Now, where do you want him put?" he asked, as he stood swaying back and forth in his effort to control the wriggling prisoner.
"Over the fence!" she cried, and stood panting in admiration of his cool skill and strength as he walked to the fence and dropped the calf on the other side. He then fastened the gate and came back to her.
"You are doing a man's work, anyway," he said, looking into her flushed face, "and you ought to call a halt. Life is too short to spend it as you are doing."
"It's all very well for you men to talk that way," Dixie retorted, as she pushed her milking-stool to the side of the cow and sat down with the pail between her knees, "but women, as well as men, want to live, and if there's any way to live without work, and plenty of it, I'd like to find out about it."
"It seems to me that a feller by the name of Long was offering to point out a way to you," he said, with a forced smile.
The back part of her uncovered head was turned toward him. Her shapely hands and bare, tapering arms gleamed like yellow marble through the dusk. He smelled the delightful odor of the warm milk as her deft fingers sent it ringing into the pail.
"Yes, he was offering me a job," he heard her say with a sarcastic little chuckle. "He wanted me to quit working at my old place and set in for him, and nothing particular was said about raising my wages."
"And what are you going to answer him, I wonder?" Henley inquired, as he bent down over her that the noise of the squirting milk might not drown her reply.