Laurie went from room to room with Aunt Laura, looking at everything. "Will you show me the cow-pitcher, Aunt Laura?" he asked, and Aunt Laura laughed and opened a deep cupboard, where the best china was kept, and took the pitcher down from a high shelf. Such a curious pitcher, it was, a brown and white china cow--I'm sure it must have been very, very old, for I never see pitchers like it now-a-days. The tail was curved into a handle, and the mouth was the spout! Aunt Laura said that she would keep it on the table every day, full of cream for his porridge, just as she had done for his mother, when she, as a little girl, had stayed at the farm. [Illustration: Aunt Laura shows Laurie the cow-pitcher] When supper came, how good everything tasted! The home-cured ham, delicious butter made on the farm, great slices of fresh bread and schmeirkase--I don't believe many of you boys and girls know what "Schmeirkase" is, do you? Well, anyway, it is made somehow from thick sour cream, so thick that it is put in a bag and hung up in the dairy until it is time to be eaten--when I was a little girl and visited a farm they used to have schmeirkase for supper, and I always hoped they would offer me a second helping and they always did! There were strawberries too, and stewed rhubarb, and chocolate layer cake. And Aunt Laura put the cake away after supper in a round tin box, in a corner of the cupboard, and gave Laurie a great slice the next morning to eat, for fear he would grow hungry before dinner. "I'm as glad as I can be that I've come," he said, and Uncle Sam and Aunt Laura smiled at each other. "So like his mother," said Aunt Laura and Laurie wondered how he could be like his mother, for his mother was ever so much taller then he, and ever so much more "grown up." [Illustration: Flower ornament] CHAPTER II. After supper, Laurie slipped his small hand inside Uncle Sam's big one, and they started out together to see the farm, the big collie dog "Shep" running along beside them. "I've never seen so many animals in all my life," he exclaimed, as they came up to the great gate that shut in the barnyard, "except perhaps in the Zoo." "Shall we stop here for a moment?" said Uncle Sam, lifting Laurie up and seating him on the gate-post, where he could see all over the yard at once. "Oh, how fine!" exclaimed Laurie, "I feel just like a little bird that perches on a tree, and looks down on the cows underneath, and isn't a bit afraid of their horns!" [Illustration: Uncle Sam and Laurie]