pigs. At any rate, they didn't give it to us. We paid that old man
twenty cents, for we drank two glasses apiece. And first we had knocked
at the farm door, and told our need to a pretty young woman, who
answered, with some hesitancy, that she would call "father." She seemed
to live in some awe of "father," as we well understood when a tall,
raw-boned, stern, old man, of the caricature "Brother Jonathan" type,
appeared grimly, making an iron sound with a great bunch of keys. On
hearing our request, he said nothing, but, motioning to us to follow,
stalked across the farmyard to a small building under a great elm-tree.
There were two steps down to the door, and it had a mysterious
appearance. It might have been a family vault, a dynamite magazine, or
the Well at the World's End. It was the strong-room of the milk; and,
when the grim old guardian of the dairy unlocked the door, with a sound
of rusty locks and falling bolts, there, cool and cloistral, were the
fragrant pans and bowls, the most sacred vessels of the farm.

"_She bathed her body many a time
In fountains filled with milk_."

I hummed to Colin; but I took care that the old man didn't hear me. And
we agreed, as we went on again along the road, that he did right to guard
well and charge well for so noble and so innocent a drink. Indeed, the
old fellow's buttermilk was so good that I think it must have gone to my
head. In no other way can I account for the following dithyrambic song:

_Let whoso will sing Bacchus' vine,
We know a drink that's more divine;

'Tis white and innocent as doves,
Fragrant and bosom-white as love's