in our 95 per cent alcohol. In which
case, of course, the joke is on me.

To return to Poppy. At first I was delighted with the thought of
unlimited milk, bought a churn and generally prepared to enjoy being a
dairymaid. I soon found out my mistake. Poppy was "drying up" just as
the vegetation was. The Finn woman who milked her morning and night, and
who seemed to be in much closer sympathy with her than I ever hoped to
be, said that what she must have was green food. Having no lawn, for
reasons previously stated, that was a poser. My brother-in-law's
chauffeur, who was lent to me for a month, unbent sufficiently to go to
town and press a bill into the hand of the head gardener of "The Place"
of the village, so that we might have the grass mowed from that lawn.
Alas for frail human nature! It seems that he disappeared from view
about once in so often, and that his feet at that moment were trembling
on the brink. So he slid over the edge, and the next man in charge 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 w