is mostly ankle-deep in slush. The boy drives a dusty,
discouraged-looking cow into the bail, and pins her head there; then
he gets tackle on to her right hind leg, hauls it back, and makes it
fast to the fence. There are eleven cows, but not one of them can be
milked out of the bail--chiefly because their teats are sore. The
selector does not know what makes the teats sore, but he has an
unquestioning faith in a certain ointment, recommended to him by a man
who knows less about cows than he does himself, which he causes to be
applied at irregular intervals--leaving the mode of application to the
discretion of his son. Meanwhile the teats remain sore.

Having made the cow fast, the youngster cautiously takes hold of the
least sore teat, yanks it suddenly, and dodges the cow's hock. When
he gets enough milk to dip his dirty hands in, he moistens the teats,
and things go on more smoothly. Now and then he relieves the monotony
of his occupation by squirting at the eye of a calf which is dozing in
the adjacent pen. Other times he milks into his mouth. Every time
the cow kicks, a burr or a grass-seed or a bit of something else falls
into the milk, and the boy drowns these things with a well-directed
stream--on the principle that what's out of sight is out of mind.

Sometimes the boy sticks his head into the cow's side, hangs on by a
teat, and dozes, while the bucket, mechanically gripped between his
knees, sinks lower and lower till it rests on the ground. Likely as
not he'll doze on until his mother's shrill voice startles him with an
inquiry as to whether he intends to get that milking done to-day;
other times he is roused by the plunging of the cow, or knocked over
by a calf which has broken through a defective panel in the pen. In
the latter case the youth gets tackle on to the calf, detaches its
head from the teat with the heel of his boot, and makes it fast