riddle about the nott cows, Jonathan? Why do nott cows give less milk in a year than horned?’
‘I don’t!’ interposed the milkmaid. ‘Why do they?’
‘Because there baint so many of ’em,’ said the dairyman. ‘Howsomever, these gam’sters do certainly keep back their milk to-day. Folks, we must lift up a stave or two—that’s the only cure for’t.’
Songs were often resorted to in dairies hereabout as an enticement to the cows when they showed signs of withholding their usual yield; and the band of milkers at this request burst into melody—in purely businesslike tones, it is true, and with no great spontaneity; the result, according to their own belief, being a decided improvement during the song’s continuance. When they had gone through fourteen or fifteen verses of a cheerful ballad about a murderer who was afraid to go to bed in the dark because he saw certain brimstone flames around him, one of the male milkers said—
‘I wish singing on the stoop didn’t use up so much of a man’s wind!’
218
