Jim'll take
her."
"I don't think it's any use, Bill; but you can try it," remarked
Mrs. Norris, her soul singing within her like a celestial choir.
* * * * *
"Where are you driving that cow to?" yelled Sam from the kitchen
door, at sunrise the following morning. "Take her out of there!
You're driving her into my yard, right over my cabbages."
But Jim, the Norris' hired man, only grinned, and proceeding with
his driving, yelled back:
"Cow's yourn, Sam. Yer old man sent it--a present to yer missus and
the babby."
"You take and drive that cow back again!" roared Sam. "And tell my
dad I won't have hide nor hair of her on my place."
Back went the cow.
"Didn't I tell you?" mourned Mrs. Norris. "Sam's that stubborn and
contrary. It's no use, Billy; he just doesn't care for his poor old
father nor mother any more."
"By the jumping Jiminy Christmas! I'll _make_ him care!" thundered
old Billy. "I'm a-goin' ter see that grandchild of mine." Then
followed a long silence.
"I say, Marthy, how are they fixed in the house?" he questioned,
after many moments of apparently brown study.
"Pretty poor," answered Sam's mother, truthfully this time.
"Got a decent stove, an' bed, an' the like?" he finally asked.
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