wanted so much to find out all about cows from Dr. Chubb. I drove slowly
and extracted the whole story from his enthusiastic old mind. What I
don't know about the bovine family now is not worth knowing, and I
believe I would enjoy undertaking to doctor a Texas herd. We parted with
vows of eternal mutual interest, and I expect to cherish that
friendship. It is not every day a girl has the chance to meet and profit
by such wisdom as a successful seventy-year-old veterinary surgeon is
obliged to possess.

As I went up the stairs to my room I met mother coming down to her
half-after-eight breakfast, and she was mildly surprised that I had not
come home at a proper time and gone to bed; but when she heard that I
had been with Sam's sick cows all night she was perfectly satisfied,
even pleased. Mother rarely remembers that I am a girl. She has thought
in masculine terms so long that it is impossible for her to get her mind
to bear directly on the small feminine proprieties.

"That's right, Betty, be a doer, no matter whom you do, even if it is
Sam's cow," said daddy, when I had finished my eulogy of Dr. Chubb and
beautiful old Mrs. Buttercup. Then he kissed mother and me and went on
down to his office, while she followed him to the gate, crocheting and
quite forgetting me.

Completely exhausted, but feeling really more effective in life than I
ever had before, even at the Astor tea-table (because Peter had been
perfectly well and Sam's cows hadn't), I took a magazine with an
entrancing portrayal of a Belgian soldier apparently eleven feet tall on
the cover and went out on the side porch to sit in the cool spring
sunshine and pick up the pieces of myself. When I put myself together
again I found that I made something that looked like an illustration to