She was relieved at the absence of a piano and secretly rejoiced that she would not need to practice. In her heart she had not liked her music lessons at all, but she had never dreamed of not accepting them from Aunt Frances as she accepted everything else. Also she had liked to hear Aunt Frances boast about how much better she could play than other children of her age.
She was downstairs by this time, and, opening a door out of the parlor, found herself back in the kitchen, the long line of sunny windows and the bright flowers giving her that quick little thrill again. Cousin Ann looked up from her ironing, nodded, and said: “All through? You’d better come in and get warmed up. Those rooms get awfully cold these January days. Winters we mostly use this room so’s to get the good of the kitchen stove.” She added after a moment, during which Elizabeth Ann stood by the stove, warming her hands: “There’s one place you haven’t seen yet—the milk-room. Mother’s down there now, churning. That’s the door—the middle one.”
Elizabeth Ann had been wondering and wondering where in the world Aunt Abigail was. So she stepped quickly to the door, and went dawn the cold dark stairs she found there. At the bottom was a door, locked apparently, for she could find no fastening. She heard steps inside, the door was briskly cast open, and she almost fell into the arms of Aunt Abigail, who caught her as she stumbled forward, saying: “Well, I’ve been expectin’ you down here for a long time. I never saw a little girl yet who didn’t like to watch butter-making. Don’t you love to run the butter-worker over it? I do, myself, for all I’m seventy-two!”
“I don’t know anything about it,” said Elizabeth Ann. “I don’t know what you make butter out of. We always bought ours.”
“Well, for goodness’ sakes!” said Aunt Abigail. She turned and called across the room, “Henry, did you ever! Here’s Betsy saying she don’t know what we make butter out of! She actually never saw anybody making butter!”
Uncle Henry was sitting down, near the window, turning the handle to a small barrel swung between two uprights. He stopped for a moment and considered Aunt Abigail’s remark with the same serious attention he had given to Elizabeth Ann’s discovery about left and right. Then he began to turn the churn over and over again and said, peaceably: “Well, Mother, you never saw anybody laying asphalt pavement, I’ll warrant you! And I suppose Betsy knows all about that.”
Elizabeth Ann’s spirits rose. She felt very superior indeed. “Oh, yes,” she assured them, “I know all about that! Didn’t you ever see anybody doing that? Why, I’ve seen them hundreds of times! Every day as we went to school they were doing over the whole pavement for blocks along there.”
Aunt Abigail and Uncle Henry looked at her with interest, and Aunt Abigail said: “Well, now, think of that! Tell us all about it!”
“Why, there’s a big black sort of wagon,” began Elizabeth Ann, “and they run it up and down and pour out the black stuff on the road. And that’s all there is to it.” She stopped, rather abruptly, looking uneasy. Uncle Henry inquired: “Now there’s one thing I’ve always wanted to know. How do they keep that stuff from hardening on them? How do they keep it hot?”
The little girl looked blank. “Why, a fire, I suppose,” she faltered, searching her memory desperately and finding there only a dim recollection of a red glow somewhere connected with the familiar scene at which she had so often looked with unseeing eyes.
“Of course a fire,” agreed Uncle Henry. “But what do they burn in it, coke or coal or wood or charcoal? And how do they get any draft to keep it going?”
Elizabeth Ann shook her head. “I never noticed,” she said.
Aunt Abigail asked her now, “What do they do to the road before they pour it on?”
“Do?” said Elizabeth Ann. “I didn’t know they did anything.”
“Well, they can’t pour it right on a dirt road, can they?” asked Aunt Abigail. “Don’t they put down cracked stone or something?”
Elizabeth Ann looked down at her toes. “I never noticed,” she said.
“I wonder how long it takes for it to harden?” said Uncle Henry.
“I never noticed,” said Elizabeth Ann, in a small voice.
Uncle Henry said, “Oh!” and stopped asking questions. Aunt Abigail turned away and put a stick of wood in the stove. Elizabeth Ann did not feel very superior now, and when Aunt Abigail said, “Now the butter’s beginning to come. Don’t you want to watch and see everything I do, so’s you can answer if anybody asks you how butter is made?” Elizabeth Ann understood perfectly what was in Aunt’s Abigail’s mind, and gave to the process of butter-making a more alert and aroused attention than she had ever before given to anything. It was so interesting, too, that in no time she forgot why she was watching, and was absorbed in the fascinations of the dairy for their own sake.
She looked in the churn as Aunt Abigail unscrewed the top, and saw the thick, sour cream separating into buttermilk
