the brims.

It was not a common dairy, and Dame Clementina was not a common
dairy-woman. She was very tall and stately, and wore her silver-white
hair braided around her head like a crown, with a high silver comb at
the top. She walked like a queen; indeed she was a noble count's
daughter. In her early youth, she had married a pretty young dairyman,
against her father's wishes; so she had been disinherited. The
dairyman had been so very poor and low down in the world, that the
count felt it his duty to cast off his daughter, lest she should do
discredit to his noble line. There was a much pleasanter, easier way
out of the difficulty, which the count did not see. Indeed, it was a
peculiarity of all his family that they never could see a way out of a
difficulty, high and noble as they were. The count only needed to have
given the poor young dairyman a few acres of his own land, and a few
bags of his own gold, and begged the king, with whom he had great
influence, to knight him, and all the obstacles would have been
removed; the dairyman would have been quite rich and noble enough for
his son-in-law. But he never thought of that, and his daughter was
disinherited. However, he made all the amends to her that he could,
and fitted her out royally for her humble station in life. He caused
this beautiful dairy to be built for her, and gave her the silver
milk-pans, and the carved stone churn.

"My daughter shall not churn in a common wooden churn, or skim the
cream from wooden pans," he had said.

The dairyman had been dead a good many years now, and Dame Clementina
managed the dairy alone. She never saw anything of her father, though
he lived in his castle not far off on a neighboring height. When the