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. It is "the Public." You never can tell about the Public! Sometimes it wants small packages for a small sum, or large packages for more, but mostly, what it frankly wants is a large package for a small sum! Some dealers didn't like the trade-mark. It was changed. It then turned out that the first trade-mark was really what was wanted. Then the cheese man fell desperately ill, which was a calamity, as

neither the Book of Common Prayer, an aeroplane, nor a Latin Grammar is what you need in such a crisis.

J—— waded dejectedly about in whey until a new cheese man took the helm. He also fell ill. I always supposed that making cheese was a kind of healthful, bucolic occupation, but I was wrong. Apparently every one that tries it steers straight for a nervous break-down. I have gotten to a point myself where, if any one quotes "Miss Muffet" to me, I emit a low, threatening growl.

However, I'm digressing, for our life was not complicated by cheese or Bulgarian bacilli till much later (and when you think of what the Bulgos have done to the Balkans we can't really complain).

That first summer Poppy seemed care enough. A neighbor across the canyon,

who had known her in her girlhood, took too vital an interest in her daily life. It was maddening to be called on the telephone at all hours and told that Poppy had had no fresh drinking water since such and such an hour, or to have Donald waylaid and admonished to give her plenty to eat. That she had, as my bills at the feed and fuel store can prove.

At this juncture the backbone of the family fell desperately ill, and I flew to the hospital where he was, leaving Poppy to kick and stamp and lose tethering pins and dry up at her own sweet will. After the danger and strain were over, I found myself also tucked into a hospital bed, while a trained nurse watched over the children and Poppy. One morning a frantic letter arrived. Poppy had dried up! According to what lights we had to guide

us, it was far too soon, but reasoning did not alter the fact. There was no milk for the boys, and the dairyman had always declined to deliver milk on our hill, it was outside his route! Two helpless persons flat on their backs in a hospital are at a disadvantage in a crisis like that. However, one must always find a way. I think I have expressed myself elsewhere as to the value of wheedling. It seemed our only hope. I wrote a letter to the owner of that dairy, in which I frankly recognized the fact that our hill was steep and the road bad, that it was out of his way and probably he had no milk to spare, anyway, but that Billie and Joe had to have milk, and that their parents were both down and out, and that it was his golden opportunity to do, not a stroke of business, but an act of kindness!

It worked. He has been serving us with milk ever since, and I'd like to testify that his heart is in the right place.

Before I leave the subject of wheedling, I might add that if it is a useful art in summer, in winter it is priceless. After a week of rain, such as we know how to have in these parts, adobe becomes very slippery. This hill is steep, and I have spent a week on its top in February, feeling like the princess in the fairy tale, who lived on a glass hill ready to marry the first suitor who reached the top; only in my case there