Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/148

138, childish set you always depict them as being. But I must be off to my cows. Good-bye, dad." Imprinting a kiss on his brow, the daughter brisked lightly out of the room.

"Im not going to make others miserable," Gwyneth thought to herself, as she set on her pretty head the wide-brimmed hat, and with milk-bucket in hand and milking-stool over her arm, sallied forth to the cow-yard.

The vale was alive. Strings of people streaming up from the morning bathe at the lake, women and children returning on the trollies, men and boys on foot. Each family had its own space staked out on the shingly shallows of the lake. All bathed together in families. A regulation swimming attire, composed of rough sacking cloth that did not hold the water nor cling to the figure, had to be worn. A Master of Ceremonies checked the slightest infringement of the rules that regulated all proceedings at the bathing-station. Unless exempted by medical certificate, all were expected to bathe regularly. The morning swim and gambol in the waters flowing from the creek out into the deep lake, conduced more than anything to the health and good spirits of the community.

This morning Gwyneth avoided the groups of returning bathers, and sought her cows amongst the two hundred that were lowing about the great milking-shed. It consisted of a long open roof of sawn palings, protecting two rows of bails, thirty on each side. In the centre, rails for the trollies ran, bringing down fodder from the fields and silos a quarter of a mile away, or bearing away the milk in the vats to the creamery and butter factory attached to the lower end of the long building. To each cow, as it was milked, a stated supply of fodder was given by lads in the centre, while a couple