The woman was worthy of such an extreme measure, for she looked capable of caring for both. She was a fine pattern of a country girl, with a head full of good sense, and very useful-looking hands and arms. Her face was good to look upon; it showed strength of character and a definite object in life. She said she understood the creamery processes in all their niceties, and that she could make butter good enough for Queen Victoria. The proposition offered by this young couple was by far the best I had received, and I closed with them at once. I agreed to pay each $25 a month to start with, and explained my plan of an increasing wage of $1 a month for each period of six months' service. They thought they ought to have $30 level. I thought so, too, if they were as good as they promised. But I had a fondness for my increasing scale, and I held to it. These people were skilled laborers, and were worth more to begin with than ordinary farm hands. That is why I gave them $25 a month from the start. Six hundred dollars a year for a man and wife, with no expense except for clothing, is good pay. They can easily put away $400 out of it, and it doesn't take long to get fore-handed. I think the Frenches have invested $500 a year, on an average, since they came to Four Oaks. It is now time to get at the dairy-house, since the dairy and the dairymaid are both in evidence. The house was to be on the building line, and both Polly and I thought it should have attractive features. We decided to make it of dark red paving brick. It was to be eighteen feet by thirty, with two rooms on the ground. The first, or south room, ten feet by eighteen, was fitted for storing fruit, and afforded a stairway to the rooms above, which were four in number besides the bath. The larger room was of course the butter factory, and was equipped with up-to-date appliances,--aerator, Pasteurizer, cooler, separator, Babcock tester, swing churn, butter-worker, and so on. The house was to have steep gables and projecting eaves, with a window in each gable, and two dormer windows in each roof. The walls were to be plastered, and the ground floor was to be cement. It cost $1375. As motive power for the churn and separator, a two-sheep-power treadmill has proved entirely satisfactory. It is worked by two sturdy wethers who are harbored in a pleasant house and run, close to the power-house, and who pay for their food by the sweat of their brows and the wool from their backs. They do not appear to dislike the "demnition grind," which lasts but an hour twice a day; they go without reluctance to the tramp that leads nowhere, and the futile journey which would seem foolish to anything wiser than a sheep. This sheep-power is one of the curios of the place. My grand-girls never lose their interest in it, and it has been photographed and sketched more times than there are fingers and toes on the sheep.