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The dinner boiled and bubbled, and the stove was working as actively in the kitchen as the corn-sheller was doing in the barnyard, when Nathan set Jack in the doorway and followed him in. Nathan sniffed appreciatively. "Smells pretty good in here," he said, and then surveying the room in surprise added, "What on earth be you churnin' for? Ain't you got enough t' do, child?"
What with sweepin' and dustin' and scrubbin' and washin' and ironin' and bringin' up children and feedin' pigs and cows and chickens and churnin' and waitin' on your father, it's no wonder I'm a helpless cripple with the misery in my back." "Dried peaches again," Matilda observed, scornfully, as Rosemary put a small saucer of fruit before her. "Who told you to get dried peaches?"
He'd wait at a big stump we could climb on his horse, take the baby in front and us up behind him, and put us off on the back piazza at the house. I wrapped up the churn and quit. She ax me what I quit churnin' for. I say the butter come. She say it ain't had time. I say it ready to take up anyhow. She got so mad she throwed a stick of stove wood, hit me on my head.
I got up early, says she, 'and dressed the children and fed my chickens and strained the milk and washed up the milk things and got breakfast and washed the dishes and cleaned up the house and gethered the vegetables for dinner and washed the children's hands and faces and put their Sunday clothes on 'em, and jest as I was startin' to git myself ready for church, says she, 'I happened to think that I hadn't skimmed the milk for the next day's churnin'. So I went down to the spring-house and did the skimmin', and jest as I picked up the cream-jar to put it up on that shelf Sam built for me, my foot slipped, says she, 'and down I come and skinned my elbow on the rock step, and broke the jar all to smash and spilled the cream all over creation, and there I was four pounds o' butter and a fifty-cent jar gone, and my spring-house in such a mess that I ain't through cleanin' it yet, and my right arm as stiff as a poker ever since.
Craig 's jus' about frantic over her cat. She says there's cat's hair everywhere 'n' the cat ain't nowhere. She was doin' out her churnin' 'n' she found some hairs in the butter.
He felt admiration, if anything, for he said as he rubbed the horse's forehead: "You shore made me ride, Old Timer! You got all the old curves and some new ones. If I had a hat I'd take it off to you. I ain't had such a churnin' sence I set 'Steamboat' fer fifteen seconds. Oh, hullo " as Wallie advanced with his hand out.
"Give me my coffee turrible quick," said Mr. Wiley; "I must be down the bridge 'fore they start dog-warpin' the side jam." "I notice you're always due at the bridge on churnin' days," remarked his spouse, testily. "'Taint me as app'ints drivin' dates at Edgewood," replied the old man. "The boys'll hev a turrible job this year.
"Them nasty, dirty critters!" she exclaimed. "I wish't the boys had killed them all. Even in daylight they don't stand up and fight fair like men. I lost a whole churnin' yesterday. Besides, they killed my best cow this mornin', that's what they done. And lookit this thing!" She held up an Indian arrow, its strap-iron head bent over at right angles. "They shot this into our plow beam.
It was the old rhyme he had been trying to recollect, and it now came, tossed uppermost in the mind-quake which had shattered his intellect, buried matters of moment, and flung to the surface long hidden events and words of his youth. "'Bucca's a churnin' the waves of the sea, Bucca's a darkenin' the sky wi' his frown, His voice is the roll o' the thunder.
"I never knew it meant that, ma," said Mary, "but that's a nice meaning anyway." She looked into the living-room, where Pearl and the doctor sat without speaking, and just as her mother was about to go to join them, she said: "I believe there's cream for a churnin', ma, it will be too sour before Monday. If you come out and stay with me, I'll do it, but I hate to work alone."
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