Page:Letters from an Oregon Ranch.djvu/88

 long acquaintance with Maud, we found she was not the guileless, rustic beauty she appeared. She was tricky, a schemer, and rather unprincipled, opening gates and barn-doors with her horns, helping herself to provender at unseasonable hours, or, if attracted by the waving of feathery carrot and green turnip tops beyond a fence, she simply threw off the upper rails, and leaped over the remaining ones, as though she supposed those things were planted for her especial use, but through some oversight her attention had not been called to them. Owing to these characteristics, we felt obliged to change her name to Becky Sharp. The calves are known as Buttercup and Trilby, if you please,—and you needn’t laugh! You are thinking of the muddy little wretches that arrived here that rainy night; but you must remember this is written at a later date, and those calves grew in beauty with the springtime, and when June came they were as lovely as her roses. Such winsome, witching things you never saw; and if only Rosa Bonheur were alive, and I could have her do them in oil (for nothing), I’d send you their pictures as proof that this description is no flattery.

But I seem to have drifted far from my subject, and must go back and tell you of my first butter-making. For several days cream had been accumulating; and at last came a morning when there was enough for churning. A pleasurable excitement seized me, and I was all eagerness to begin the work. I had never in my