The Smiling Hill-Top | Page 5

had other friends with other cows. I tried the
vegetable man next. He was a pleasant Greek, and promised me all his
beet-tops and wilted lettuce. That was good as far as it went, but Poppy
would go through a crate of lettuce as I would a bunch of grapes, and I
couldn't see that we got any more milk. The Finn woman said that the
flies annoyed her and that no cow would give as much milk if she were
constantly kicking and stamping to get them off. She advised me to get
some burlap for her. That seemed simple, but it wasn't. Nothing was
simple connected with that cow. I found I could only get stiff burlap,
such as you put on walls, in art green, and I couldn't picture Poppy in a
kimono of that as being anything but wretched. Finally, in a hardware
store, the proprietor took an interest in my sad tale, and said he'd had
some large shipments come in lately wrapped in burlap, and that I
could have a piece. He personally went to the cellar for it and gave it to
me as a present.
Much cheered, I hurried home and we put Poppy into her brown jacket,
securing it neatly with strings. By morning, I regret to say, she had
kicked it to shreds. Also the Finn woman decided that she needed
higher pay and more milk as her perquisite. Since we were obviously
"city folks" she thought she might as well hold us up, and she felt sure
that I couldn't get any one in her place. I surprised her by calmly
replying that she could go when her week was up, and I would get
some one else. It was a touch of rhetoric on my part, for I didn't
suppose that I could any more than she did, though I was resolved to
make a gallant fight, even if I had to enlist the services of the dry
cleaner, who was the only person who voluntarily called almost daily to
see if we had any work to be done.

The joke of it was that I had no trouble at all. A youth of sixteen, who
viewed me in the light of "opportunity knocking at the door," gladly
accepted my terms. He was the son of the foreman at a dairy in the
neighborhood, and rode over night and morning on a staid old mare
loaned him by the dairyman.
Donald was bright and willing, and eventually was able to get near
enough to Poppy to milk her, though she never liked him. The Finn
woman was the only person with whom she was in sympathy. I think
they were both Socialists. Donald said we must do something about the
flies. I told him about my attempts to dress her in burlap, and we
concluded that a spray was the thing. Donald brought a nice antiseptic
smelling mixture, and we put it on her with the rose sprayer. Probably
we were too impulsive; anyway, the milk was very queer. Did you ever
eat saffron cake in Cornwall? It tasted like that. The children declined it
firmly, and I sympathized with them. After practice we managed to
spray her in a more limited way.
By this time we were having sherbet instead of ice-cream for Sunday
dinner, and my ideas of a private cow had greatly altered.
I have a black list that has been growing through life; things I wish
never to have again: tapioca pudding, fresh eggs if I have to hear the
hen brag about it at 5 A.M., tripe, and home-grown milk, and to this list
I have lately added cheese. Every one is familiar with the maxim that
rest is a change of occupation. J----, being tired of Latin verbs, Greek
roots, and dull scholars generally, took up some interesting laboratory
work after we emigrated to California. Growing Bulgarian bacilli to
make fermented milk that would keep us all perennially amiable while
we grew to be octogenarians, was one thing, but when the company,
lured by the oratory of a cheese expert, were beguiled into making
cream cheese--just the sort of cheese that Lucullus and Ponce de Leon
both wanted but did not find--our troubles began. The company is
composed of one minister with such an angelic expression that no one
can refuse to sign anything if he holds out a pen; one aviator with youth,
exuberant spirits, and a New England setness of purpose; one
schoolmaster--strong on facing facts and callous to camouflage, and

one temperamental cheese man. (It turned out afterward, however, that
the janitor could make the best cheese of them all.) Developing a
cheese business is a good deal like conducting a love affair--it blows
hot and cold in a nerve-racking way.