thinks of skimming milk now-a-days. Every up-to-date farmer uses
a separator.”
Mrs. Wheeler’s pale eyes twinkled. “Mahailey and I will never be
quite up-to-date, Ralph. We’re old-fashioned, and I don’t know but
you’d better let us be. I could see the advantage of a separator
if we milked half-a-dozen cows. It’s a very ingenious machine.
But it’s a great deal more work to scald it and fit it together
than it was to take care of the milk in the old way.”
“It won’t be when you get used to it,” Ralph assured her. He was
the chief mechanic of the Wheeler farm, and when the farm
implements and the automobiles did not give him enough to do, he
went to town and bought machines for the house. As soon as
Mahailey got used to a washing-machine or a churn, Ralph, to keep
up with the bristling march of invention, brought home a still
newer one. The mechanical dish-washer she had never been able to
use, and patent flat-irons and oil-stoves drove her wild.
Claude told his mother to go upstairs and dress; he would scald
the separator while Ralph got the car ready. He was still working
at it when his brother came in from the garage to wash his hands.
“You really oughtn’t to load mother up with things like this,
Ralph,” he exclaimed fretfully. “Did you ever try washing this
damned thing yourself?”
“Of course I have. If Mrs. Dawson can manage it, I should think
mother could.”
“Mrs. Dawson is a younger woman. Anyhow, there’s no point in
trying to make machinists of Mahailey and mother.”
Ralph lifted his eyebrows to excuse Claude’s bluntness. “See
here,” he said persuasively, “don’t you go encouraging her into
thinking she can’t change her ways. Mother’s entitled to all the
labour-saving devices we can get her.”
Claude rattled the thirty-odd graduated metal funnels which he
was trying to fit together in their proper sequence. “Well, if
this is labour-saving”
The younger boy giggled and ran upstairs for his panama hat. He
never quarrelled. Mrs. Wheeler sometimes said it was wonderful,
how much Ralph would take from Claude.
After Ralph and his mother had gone off in the car, Mr. Wheeler
drove to see his German neighbour, Gus Yoeder, who had just
bought a blooded bull. Dan and Jerry were pitching horseshoes
down behind the barn. Claude told Mahailey he was going to the
cellar to put up the swinging shelf she had been wanting, so that
the rats couldn’t get at her vegetables.
“Thank you, Mr. Claude. I don’t know what does make the rats so
bad. The cats catches one most every day, too.”
“I guess they come up from the barn. I’ve got a nice wide board
down at the garage for your shelf.” The cellar was cemented, cool
and dry, with deep closets for canned fruit and flour and
groceries, bins for coal and cobs, and a dark-room full of
photographer’s apparatus. Claude took his place at the
