Page:Frank Stockton - Rudder Grange.djvu/94

Rh pretty soon left that place. I heard you was a-keepin' house out here, and so I thought I'd come along and see you, and if you hadn't no girl I'd like to live with you again, and I guess you might as well take me, for that other girl said, when she got down from the shed, that she was goin' away to-morrow; she wouldn't stay in no house where they kept such a dog, though I told her I guessed he was only cuttin' 'round because he was so glad to get loose."

"Cutting around!" exclaimed Euphemia. "It was nothing of the kind. If you had seen him you would have known better. But did you come now to stay? Where are your things?"

"On me," replied Pomona.

When Euphemia found that the Irish girl really intended to leave, we consulted together and concluded to engage Pomona, and I went so far as to agree to carry her books to and from the circulating library to which she subscribed, hoping thereby to be able to exercise some influence on her taste. And thus part of the old family of Rudder Grange had come together again. True, the boarder was away, but, as Pomona remarked, when she heard about him: "You couldn't always expect to ever regain the ties that had always bound everybody."

Our delight and interest in our little farm increased day by day. In a week or two after Pomona's arrival I bought a cow. Euphemia was very anxious to have an Alderney—they were such gentle, beautiful creatures—but I could not afford such a luxury. I might possibly compass an Alderney calf, but we would have to wait a couple of years for our milk, and Euphemia said it would be better to have a common cow than to do that.

Great was our inward satisfaction when the cow,