Page:While Caroline Was Growing.djvu/42

 pumpkin-pie. In William Thayer's little basket was a large piece of cheese.

"It's coffee 'n milk mixed together; they had bottles of it," he explained. "William Thayer 'll take back the pail. Are you hungry?"

Caroline nodded.

"Awful," she stated briefly.

"Well, then," he said with satisfaction, "let's begin."

Caroline attacked a sandwich, with shining eyes, and when in another minute the boy took from his pocket a tin ring that slipped miraculously out of itself into a jointed cup, and dipped her a mug of hot coffee from the bubbling pail, she realized with a pang of joy that this was, beyond any question, the master moment of her life.

"I take this along," he explained, "so's when I go by, and they're milking, I can have some warm. Anybody'd give me all I want if William Thayer dances and drops dead for 'em. It tastes good early in the morning, I tell you."

She sighed with pleasure. To drink warm milk in the cool, early dawn, with the cows about you, and the long, sweet day free before!