For so good and patient a man, Si Hummaston bore himself rather vehemently during the milking. It was hotter in the barn than it was outside in the sun, and the stifling air swarmed with flies, which seemed to follow Si perversely from stall to stall and settle on his cow. One beast put her hoof square in his pail, and another refused altogether to "give down," while the rest kept up a tireless slapping and swishing of their tails very hard to bear, even if one had the help of profanity. Marcellus and I listened carefully to hear him at last provoked to an oath, but the worst thing he uttered, even when the cow stepped in the milk, was "Dum your buttons!" which Marcellus said might conceivably be investigated by a church committee, but was hardly out-and-out swearing. I remember Si's groans and objurgations, his querulous "Hyst there, will ye!" his hypocritical "So-boss! So-boss!" his despondent "They never will give down for me!" because presently there was crossed upon this woof of peevish impatience the web of a curious conversation. Si had been so slow in his headway against flapping tails and restive hoofs that, before he had got up to the end of the row, Aunt Em had finished her side. She brought over her stool and pail, and seated herself at the next cow to Hummaston's. For a little, one heard only the resonant din of the stout streams against the tin; then, as the bottom was covered, there came the ploughing plash of milk on milk, and Si could hear himself talk. "S'pose you know S'reny's come, 'long with your father," he remarked, ingratiatingly. "I saw 'em drive in," replied Em. "_Whoa! Hyst there! Hole still, can't ye?_ I didn't know if you quite made out who she was, you was scootin' 'long so fast. They ain't—_Whoa there!_—they ain't nothin' the matter 'twixt you and her, is they?" "I don't know as there is," said Em, curtly. "The world's big enough for both of us—we ain't no call to bunk into each other." "No, of course—_Now you stop it!_—but it looked kind o' curious to me, your pikin' off like that, without waitin' to say 'How-d'-do?' Of course, I never had no relation by marriage that was stuck-up at all, or looked down on me—_Stiddy there now!_—but I guess I can reelize pretty much how you feel about it. I'm a good deal of a hand at that. It's what they call imagination. It's a gift, you know, like good looks, or preachin', or the knack o' makin' money. But you can't help what you're born with, can you? I'd been a heap better off if my gift 'd be'n in some other direction; but, as I tell 'em, it ain't my fault. And my imagination—_Hi, there! git over, will ye?_—it's downright cur'ous sometimes, how it works. Now I could tell, you see, that you 'n S'reny didn't pull together. I s'pose she never writ a line to you, when your husband was killed?" "Why should she?" demanded Em. "We never did correspond. What'd be the sense of beginning then? She minds her affairs, 'n I mind mine. Who wanted her to write?"