Poppy, the cow, contributed her bit—­it wasn’t milk, either—­to this complicated month, but deserves a chapter all to herself.

The backbone of the family found my letters “so entertaining” at first, but gradually a note of uneasiness crept into his replies after I had told him that Joedy had fallen out of the machine and had just escaped our rear wheels, and that the previous night we had had three earthquakes.  I had never felt an earthquake before, and it will be some time before I develop the nonchalance of a seasoned Californian, whose way of referring to one is like saying, “Oh, yes, we did have a few drops of rain last night.”  One more little tremble and I should have gathered the family for a night in the garden.

After an incendiary had set fire to several houses in town, and Fraeulein had had a peculiar seizure that turned her a delicate sea-green, while she murmured, “I am going to die,” I sat down and took counsel with myself.  What next?  I bought a rattlesnake antidote outfit—­that, at least, I could anticipate, and then I went out with the axe and hacked out the words “Suma Paz” from the pergola.  We are now “The Smiling Hill-Top,” for though peace does not abide with us, we keep right on smiling.

[Illustration]

A
California
poppy

It would doubtless be the proper thing for me to begin by quoting Stevenson: 

    “The friendly cow, all red and white,
     I love with all my heart,” etc.

but I’d rather not.  In the first place she wasn’t, and in the second place I didn’t.  The only thing about it that fits is the color scheme; Poppy was a red-and-white cow, but I’d rather not.  In the first place she wasn’t, and in the second place I didn’t.  The only thing about it that fits is the color scheme; Poppy was a red-and-white cow, or rather a kind of strawberry roan.  Perhaps she didn’t like being inherited (she came to us with “The Smiling Hill-Top"), or maybe she was lonely on the hillside and felt that it was too far from town.  Almost all the natives of the village feel that way; or perhaps she took one of those aversions to me that aren’t founded on anything in particular.  At any rate, I never saw any expression but resentment in her eye, so that no warm friendship ever grew up between us.

The only other cow we ever boarded—­I use the word advisedly—­did not feel any more drawn to me than Poppy.  Evidently I am not the type that cows entwine their affections about.  She was Pennsylvania Dutch and shared Poppy’s sturdy appetite, though it all went to figure.  Two quaint maiden ladies next door took care of her and handed the milk over our fence, while it was still foaming in the pail.  Miss Tabitha and Miss Letitia—­how patient they were with me in my abysmal ignorance of the really vital things of life, such as milking, preserving, and pickling!  They undertook it all for me, but in the end I had a small laugh at their expense.  I gave them my grandmother’s recipes for brandied peaches and pickled peaches, and though rigidly temperance, they consented to do a dozen jars of each.  Alas! they mingled the two—­now as I write it down I wonder if perhaps they did it on purpose, on the principle that drug stores now put a dash of carbolic in our 95 per cent alcohol.  In which case, of course, the joke is on me.