Collapse 
after a time. . . . J kept at it when I was an 
old man, before this trouble crippled me. As 
long as I was able to get up nimble whenever a 
cow kicked me over I didn’t mind. But when 
I found I had to lay there and she might step 
forward and tread on me, I had to give up.” 
So Mr. Smith, according to his own account. 
And the lady replied, ‘Oh! do they kick you 
over when you are on the milking stool?” My 
uncle laughed, telling me. His guest had seemed 
alarmed, and inclined to think again before 
offering her services to “her friend Lady So- 
and-so,” to look after her four gentle Jerseys. 
If Mr. Smith had lived to see what women 
accomplished in the war, he must have revised 
his opinion of them. It may, however, be 
observed, that he was only talking of one woman, 
in the idler classes. Moreover, he had nothing 
himself left to take pride in except his memories 
of his own lost prowess. 
This was in the spring of 1915, and proved to 
be my last talk with him; for he died in the 
summer of that year (July 10). Yet it was not 
the last time I saw him alive. The evening 
before his death I stood beside him, although 
he did not see me or seem to know that I was 
there. Now and again, in very feeble voice, he 
called out “‘ Susie,” and I suppose he was appeal- 
ing to his sister, dead thirty years before, who 
163 | 
