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