“Breakfast,” said Flo.
“How done these suit you?” he asked in a quiet tone.
In the pen were two calves, a red-brown and a white, their heads stuck into a bucket which the farmer held tilted at the height of his knee. They sucked and guggled, and shoved and swayed, and looked so young and curly that Flo could not keep her hand off. Where she touched, the skin jerked as if her fingers tickled like a fly, but the youngsters were much too greedily engrossed to bother further.
“Two grand uns,” said the farmer. “Pity as Monica’s white.”
“Why,” Flo asked.
“Not supposed to be as good . . . dunna know why.”
Flo, privately preferred the white because it looked so clean. Now the sucking was more noisy till the red lifted a froth-decorated nose, only the next instant to plunge back and shove blindly all round the bucket bottom. The white gave up and stood splay-legged, staring solemnly with damson eyes.
“Monica?” said Flo.
“Because it’s like the old woman . . . non very big, but plenty of guts on it.” He chuckled; and Flo noticed how the calf’s belly bulged as if it were with what it had drunk.
“Never know when they’ve had as much as is good for ’em,” added the farmer with the same caressing quality that Flo had noticed in the shippon. He latched the gate and looked into the next pen. Here was one calf, somewhat larger. Flo held her hand over and the calf nosed for it eagerly. She flinched, but then held her fingers steady in the warm slaveriness of its lips while it sucked energetically. Her middle finger seemed to fit into a groove. She thought the calf must imagine that it had got its mother’s teat, till all at once it gave up and quested with its nose round about. But what it wanted was not there either, and it mooed childishly.
“Like to feed ’im?”
“Yes, please.”
Mr. Nadin picked up another bucket and the calf nearly butted her over. “You’ll spill, you silly thing,” she ejaculated and laughed without knowing. The calf thrust in so greedily that its nostrils were drowned. Its sneeze and shake spattered her with suds, but she did not mind. “It might never have drunk before,” she exclaimed.
“He hasna . . . often, non that road,” said the farmer appreciatively. “And he’ll non have many more here.”
“Oh?” said Flo.
“Off to-morrow; we conna bother with his sort.”
“Why not?” she asked, feeling the eagerness and warmth of the youngster against her, and loving it.
“Eat too much; an’ you conna milk ’em.”
“Oh,” she repeated doubtfully.
At last there was no more, and the calf blinked ready to fall asleep.
“It’s not going to be killed, is it?” she asked anxiously.
“Nay; Jack’s taking him,” he answered; and she wondered who Jack was, but she judged from the farmer’s tone that he was a person to be trusted.
“Breakfast,” she exclaimed, suddenly remembering. “Missis’ll be cross.”
“Eh, dunna worry about her,” he advised, indifferent. “If it isna one thing, it’s t’other.”
He jangled the buckets together and led into the barn and through a door on the right, where she saw this time a row of the heads of cows. All the great eyes of those nearest seemed to be watching her gravely.
“I mun get you out milking regular,” said Mr. Nadin. “If you dunna get chance you’ll never learn.”
He opened a little gate into the central stall and pushed his way between two cows. When Flo followed they seemed both to lean on her, and for an instant she was afraid. As she escaped a tail slashed her neck. The unexpected touch of the coarse hair made her flinch; then she laughed, relieved.
“Do they sleep here?” she asked, looking at the sodden sawdust.
“Yes.”
“I—I thought they had straw.”
“They do, when we have any; we’ve run out,” and he marched on as if there was nothing in sleeping on a brick floor. Flo wondered if it was something that the cruelty people ought to be told about, only somehow she could not think that the farmer would deliberately wrong the cows.
“You never know,” he said partly to himself. “You conna look at ’em too often.” Flo wondered what he meant, but she did not like to ask. He latched the lower door, but left the tipper part open carefully halfway.
“Bin ta Moss for him?” demanded Mrs. Nadin tartly the moment they got in.
“She mun come out milking wi’ me tomorrow mornin’,” said the farmer slowly, but with a certain finality.
“You’d best stay in an’ help me then,” his wife retorted. “A fine kettle o’ fish you’d make on it.”
He seemed not to hear. Clem had a Farmer and Stockbreeder tilted against a quart jug and did not look up. Bert was chewing steadily, and every few seconds sucked a mouthful out of a white pint pot. Dot was at the corner nearest to the fireplace.
“It’s in th’ oven,” said Mrs. Nadin scarcely interrupting her eating. “If you conna come, you mun look after yoursel’s; it’s non a boarding-house.”
Flo got out for the pair of them. As after the early morning porridge neither of the sons moved till Mr. Nadin finished, and at once got up and half-filled a bucket with steaming water from the sink.
“Dunna be taking all that,” Mrs. Nadin warned, getting up briskly.
After that Flo was never given a moment’s rest. It was what Mrs. Nadin called “Upstairs morning”. To Flo it seemed like a spring-cleaning, for everything had to be lifted out, the carpets taken up and beaten; and finally all the furniture had to be polished as if it had never been polished before, though it was as bright as glass.
“Wearing ourselves out,” said Dot. “I wish you’d some sense, Ma.”
“Mucky house, mucky mind,” retorted the little woman, working with energy that never flagged. “A fine midden-hole you’ll have if there’s any fool as’ll give you chance.”
Then Flo peeled potatoes. Not till afternoon did she get a minute alone. Just before three Mrs. Nadin unexpectedly explained that she always took a “two-three minutes shut-eye; when you get to be an old hen like me you’ll find as you con do wi’ it”, and off she stumped upstairs as vigorously as she had set off in the morning to the cleaning. Flo was apprehensive of what would happen while Dot had charge, but almost at once Dot went up the passage, too, and then the house went quiet and still, except for the tick-tock of the grandfather in the corner. It was such a lazy tick-tock that Flo wondered whether the clock were forgetfully taking a snooze also and getting terribly slow. Certainly it seemed a long time since she first came downstairs; a long day. She idled a little over the washing-up, stirring the grease slowly round without thinking of it. She tried to imagine what her mother would be doing; the time when they said “Good-bye” seemed a much longer way back than the day before.
The silence made her nervous all at once whether Mrs. Nadin might be listening, so she clashed two plates together and began to wipe. Then a timid mew made her look down. The grey barred cat purred and lifted its tail vertically all except two inches at the tip and rubbed its flank against her leg. She selected three pieces of mutton gristle and the cat’s purr became louder, almost like the sound of sawing. She stooped and played her finger-tips in the fur of the animal’s crown. When she stood to the sink again she was surprised to see a strange float entering the yard. The driver was young with very prominent cheek-bones and very light cream hair very short and upright. He walked briskly up the path, and after the least knock lifted the latch and stood square in the kitchen doorway.