“Sir.  Howdy!”

Turning, I saw a rough-looking but kindly featured man of sixty-five, the evident owner of the place.

I returned his salutation with some confusion and much deference.  “I must really beg your pardon for this intrusion,” I began, “but I have been tiring myself out fishing, and your home here looked so pleasant—­and I felt so thirsty—­and—­”

“Want a drink, I reckon,” said the old man, turning abruptly toward the kitchen door, then pausing as suddenly, with a backward motion of his thumb—­“jest foller the path here down to the little brick—­that’s the spring—­and you’ll find ’at you’ve come to the right place fer drinkin’-worter!  Hold on a minute tel I git you a tumbler—­there’re nothin’ down there but a tin.”

“Then don’t trouble yourself any further,” I said, heartily, “for I’d rather drink from a tin cup than a goblet of pure gold.”

“And so’d I,” said the old man, reflectively, turning mechanically, and following me down the path. “’Druther drink out of a tin—­er jest a fruit-can with the top knocked off—­er—­er—­er a gourd,” he added in a zestful, reminiscent tone of voice, that so heightened my impatient thirst that I reached the spring-house fairly in a run.

“Well-sir!” exclaimed my host, in evident delight, as I stood dipping my nose in the second cupful of the cool, revivifying liquid, and peering in a congratulatory kind of way at the blurred and rubicund reflection of my features in the bottom of the cup, “Well-sir, blame-don! ef it don’t do a feller good to see you enjoyin’ of it thataway!  But don’t you drink too much o’ the worter!—­’cause there’re some sweet milk over there in one o’ them crocks, maybe; and ef you’ll jest, kindo’ keerful-like, lift off the led of that third one, say, over there to yer left, and dip you out a tinful er two o’ that, w’y, it’ll do you good to drink it, and it’ll do me good to see you at it—­But hold up!—­hold up!” he called, abruptly, as, nowise loath, I bent above the vessel designated.  “Hold yer hosses fer a second!  Here’s Marthy; let her git it fer ye.”

If I was at first surprised and confused, meeting the master of the house, I was wholly startled and chagrined in my present position before its mistress.  But as I arose, and stammered, in my confusion, some incoherent apology, I was again reassured and put at greater ease by the comprehensive and forgiving smile the woman gave me, as I yielded her my place, and, with lifted hat, awaited her further kindness.

“I came just in time, sir,” she said, half laughingly, as with strong, bare arms she reached across the gurgling trough and replaced the lid that I had partially removed.—­“I came just in time, I see, to prevent father from having you dip into the ‘morning’s-milk,’ which, of course, has scarcely a veil of cream over the face of it as yet.  But men, as you are doubtless willing to admit,” she went on jocularly, “don’t know about these things.  You must pardon father, as much for his well-meaning ignorance of such matters, as for this cup of cream, which I am sure you will better relish.”