322 Next to the Ground 



white if it had white anywhere about it, 

 royally red, or spotted to vie with Joseph's 

 coat of old. He stood stiffly upright for a 

 breath, staring about him, then curled his tail 

 over his back and dashed to meet his dam, 

 who at once cuddled him under her chin, 

 lowered her horns, and brandished them if 

 Watch so much as looked at her, but after 

 the dog was ordered home, suffered herself to 

 be driven slowly to the pen, with her baby 

 trotting at her side. 



In milking her, the first flow was rather 

 sticky, and of a deep cheesy yellow. " Beasly 

 milk," Black Mammy called it. Joe listened 

 to her and smiled. Beasly seemed to him a 

 corruption of beastings, the old English name 

 for such a flow. He smiled too to see how 

 careful Mammy was that none of the first 

 flow should fall upon the ground. She 

 believed firmly that to let it fall there and 

 dry in would dry up the cow's milk very 

 shortly, and make her ever after unprofitable. 

 She had faith too that by pouring the milk all 

 along the backbone, rubbing it in, making the 

 sign of a cross with it over the shoulders, and 

 mumbling inarticulately while all this went on, 

 she made it certain that the cow could not 

 be " witched," that she would not kick over 

 the milk-pail, nor spoil her milk by feeding 

 upon poison oak, known locally as cow-itch. 



