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The lowing of Gentle Annie as she mildly endeavored to make it known that milking-time was past, the muffled grunting of the two pigs as they rooted in the mud or poked flat flexible noses through the bars, the restless padding of Chance to and from the bedroom, merely harmonized in chorus with audible slumbers until one of the hens cackled.
The mists were rising from the lowlands; along the creek the sunset sky was all a flaming glory, under whose deep splendor the June prairies lay tenderly green and still; down in the village the sounds of the Mexicans settling into camp; the shouting of children, romping late; and out across the levels, the mooing call of milking-time from some far-away settler's barn-yard; a robin singing a twilight song in the elms; crickets chirping in the long grass; and the gentle evening breeze sweet and cool out of the west such was the setting for us two.
It is like that all day long a double stream of people always pouring by. I have looked out of these windows for twenty-five years, and it was very different in the old days. I remember when the cows used to come tinkling down around that corner at milking-time. A twelve-story office building will rise there before another year. We have here the finest city and the finest State in the Union.
One of them, the oldest of all, had given milk for him when he was a baby, and he never forgot to carry her a handful of salt at milking-time. He often thought that he would rather have bought a cow with the gold-piece than a silver chain; but he did not tell anybody, for fear of being laughed at.
Late that afternoon Melissa had found Whizzer in that very pasture when she was driving old Betsy, the brindle, home at milking-time. Since then, no one of the Turners had seen the Dillon dog. That, however, did not prove that Whizzer was not at home. And yet,
So the flock was hastening to reach the gully before milking-time. The young cowbird called disconsolately again and again after the shadow of the flock was far away, making a moving blot across the darkening plains.
Christie applied herself to the task, but not without many a sigh and many a longing look at the bright sunshine. If Effie once got fairly engaged in planning and patching, there would be no use in thinking of a walk before milking-time. "Oh, dear!" she said, with a sigh. "I wish there was no such a thing as old clothes in the world!"
How long she would have remained in that phase is unknown, for just then her ears were assailed by a loud bass note from the other side, causing her to jump round. 'O la! what dreadful thing is it? she exclaimed, and beheld a cow of Loveday's, of the name of Crumpler, standing close to her shoulder. It being about milking-time, she had come to look up David and hasten on the operation.
As the summer came on the mosquitoes became a dreadful plague, and the consequent vicious switching of Dunne's tail at milking-time was even more annoying than the mosquitoes. Fred, the brother who did the milking, was of an inventive as well as an impatient turn of mind, and he devised a simple plan to stop the switching.
The thick wood was the true whisk to brush away all the naggings and perplexities that swarmed, like house-flies in the cleared lands. Nance Jane, the cow that did not know enough to come home at milking-time, knew that. In the hot weather, when the blood-sucking horse-flies and sweat-bees were worst, she would crash through the thickest underbrush and so be swept clean of her tormentors.
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