A Farmer’s Life 
unvalued. One such Mr. Smith had heard 
wondering how they milked cows into those 
tremendous high milk-churns you see at railway 
stations. Had military gentlemen been able to 
witness my uncle’s amusement, they would have 
had uneasy doubts about the genuineness of the 
respect generally shown to them in country 
places. I, for my part, had little doubt. Mr. 
Smith evidently had none too high an opinion of 
the common-sense of officers. Nor yet of officers 
alone. The pretensions of the classes they are 
drawn from—the gentry and their like—struck 
him as comic. Such people must be humoured ; 
yet a really practical man might smile to himself. 
My uncle allowed his prejudices to carry him 
perhaps a little too far in this dire€tion. In my 
last talk with him—he lay on his bed, feeble, 
helpless, and in pain—he spoke with his old 
humour of several ladies of the parish who were 
thinking to take up farm-work during the war. 
One of them had come to visit him—a nice 
cheery woman whose visits he appreciated, he 
said. But he had told her—and now with the 
old twinkle in his eyes he repeated to me: 
“Yes, I think with cows you might do some- 
thing—if there was about two others with ye, 
and somebody to clean out the cow-stall and get 
the fodder together and tie the cows up. Then 
I dessay you might milk one—or perhaps two 
162 
