“A bad job!” said he, with a shake of the head worthy of Sheridan’s Lord Burleigh.  “A sad job, indeed! and you only bought her last market-day.  Well, it can’t be helped.”

“But what ails her?” said I.

“What ails her! why, she’s got the lung disease.”

“But what it is that? said I.

“What’s that! why, it’s what kills lots of cows; takes ’em off in two or three days.  You must sell her for what she’ll fetch.  Perhaps you may get $10 for her.  I’ll get rid of her for you.”

“But,” said H., “if she has the ‘lung disease’ you talk of, you tell us she must die.”

“Yes; she’ll die, sure enough.”

“Well, then, who will buy a cow that is sure to be dead to-morrow or next day?”

“Oh, that’s no concern of yours! You get rid of her, that’s all.”

To this dictum we rather demurred, and resolved to send for a cow-doctor, and see if she could be cured; if not, to take care she was not converted after her death into “country sausages,” for the benefit of London consumers of those dainties.  Our friendly counsellor was very indignant at our perversity in not getting rid of a cow with “the lung disease,” and stumped out of the yard in a fit of virtuous indignation.  With proper treatment the cow soon got well.

We still had occasional trouble with our butter-making; sometimes it would come in half an hour, sometimes we were hard at work with the churn for two or three hours, and then the butter was invariably bad.  We tried to procure information on the subject, and asked several farmer’s wives in the neighborhood “how long butter ought to be in coming.”  We always received the same answer:—­

“Why, you see, ma’am, that depends.”

“Well,” we asked, “what does it depend on?”

“Oh, on lots of things.”

“Well, tell us some of the things on which it depends.”

“Why, you see it’s longer coming in hot weather, and it’s longer coming in cold weather; and it depends on how long the cow has calved, and how you churn, and on lots beside.”

We found we must endeavor to discover for ourselves the reason why we were half an hour in getting it one day, and the next, perhaps, two or three hours.

As the weather became colder we found it more troublesome, and one frosty day we churned four hours without success.  We put in cold water, we put in hot we put in salt, we talked of adding vinegar, but did not; we churned as fast as we could turn the handle, and then as slowly as possible, but still no butter.  At the end of more than four hours our labors were rewarded.  The butter came; strong, rank stuff it was.