d Mother what a bargain he'd made.

In the morning Dad took a bucket and went to milk "Dummy." All of us
accompanied him. He crawled through the rails while "Dummy" tore the
earth with her fore-feet and threw lumps of it over the yard. But she
was n't so wild as she seemed, and when Dad went to work on her with a
big stick she walked into the bail quietly enough. Then he sat to milk
her, and when he took hold of her teats she broke the leg-rope and
kicked him clean off the block and tangled her leg in the bucket and
made a great noise with it. Then she bellowed and reared in the bail
and fell down, her head screwed the wrong way, and lay with her tongue
out moaning.

Dad rose and spat out dirt.

"Dear me!" Mother said, "it's a WILD cow y' bought."

"Not at all," Dad answered; "she's a bit touchy, that's all."

"She tut-tut--TUTCHED YOU orright, Dad," Joe said from the top of the
yard.

Dad looked up. "Get down outer THAT!" he yelled. "No wonder the damn
cow's frightened."

Joe got down.

Dad brought "Dummy" to her senses with a few heavy kicks on her nose,
and proceeded to milk her again. "Dummy" kicked and kicked. Dad
tugged and tugged at her teats, but no milk came. Dad could n't
understand it. "Must be frettin'," he said.

Joe owned a pet calf about a week old which lived on water and a long
rope. Dad told him to fetch it to see if it would suck. Joe fetched
it, and it sucked ravenously at "Dummy's" flank, and joyfully wagged
its tail. "Dummy" resented it. She plunged until the leg-rope parted
again, when the calf got mixed up in her legs, and she trampled it in
the ground. Joe took it away. Dad turned "Dummy" out and bailed her
up the next day--and every day for a week--with the same result. Then
he sent for Larry O'Laughlin, who posed as a cow doctor.

"She never give a drop in her life," Larry said. "Them's BLIND tits
she have."

Dad one day sold "Dummy" for ten shillings and bought a goat, which
Johnson shot on his cultivation and made Dad drag away.

Chapter XXI.

The Parson and the Scone.

It was dinner-time. And were n't we hungry!--particularly Joe! He was
kept from school that day to fork up hay-work hard enough for a
man--too hard for some men--but in many things Joe was more than a
man's equal. Eating was one of them. We were all silent. Joe ate
ravenously. The meat and pumpkin disappeared, and the pile of hot
scones grew rapidly less. Joe regarded it with an