But there was one button that got me. It was in the front bedroom with the double-mirror doors on the big closet. We pushed it and didn't hear a thing. Logically, it ought to do something. I pushed again and listened for the tinkle. My wife went upstairs and downstairs, while I pushed, and every now and then I'd yell at her. "Anything happening?" "No," she would reply. "Push it real quickly and see if you can't take it by surprise!" I tried every method I could think of to make that push button earn its existence. Every day since I've tried it, determined to learn what it ought to do or die in the attempt. But to this day that push button is a mystery. The Adventure of the Reluctant Cow: Billy Pentz wants to know if we will keep a bee at our house. We will not. And another thing, I don't know why bees are kept in an apiary. I cannot see the line of identification between bees and apes. Apes should be kept in an apiary; bees should be kept in a beeswax. But we have been thinking about a cow. There is a company cowary right back of our house, and when the wind is from the south the call of the diary is strong upon us. Pardon me, I should have written the dairy. There's another digression. Why should the transportation of two letters change a notebook into a milk foundry? I watched William milking a cow in the cowary, and the ease with which he performed what to me seemed no less than magic was simply astounding. Sitting there as quietly as you please, on an inverted bucket, with an uninverted bucket between his knees, he directed streams of embryo butter and ice-cream and custard into the centre of a foaming pool with no more concern than a Queen of the sixth century would show in knifing a kneeling page. "We will get a cow," I announced briefly, but with that masterful tone that identifies me in any company. My wife looked at me, the way some women look at some men. I withered but held my ground. "Why, you can't even milk a cow!" she said. Now, I've never taken a dare from any woman. I hiked right back down the patch, careless of the newly sown grass plots, and blundered into the cowary. "William," I said, "arise and hand me that can! I'm going to show you how I used to milk when I was a cowboy!" If this were fiction it would be funny, but it's fact; and many a thing that's funny in fiction is tragedy in fact. William handed me the bucket. I said, "So, Bossy," and seated myself just as I had seen William do it, with my feet crossed and the bucket between my knees. That it slipped the first time and slopped over my trousers was merely an incident. After I'd managed a half-nelson grip with my knee caps I grabbed a couple of the cow's depending protuberances and squeezed. Nothing happened. I squeezed again and pulled. A couple of drops trickled into the palms of my hands. Encouraged, I tried a jiu-jitsu stunt designed to astonish the cow into yielding to superior intelligence, and she looked around at me and grinned.