It always seemed to me that the Englishman's cow was thinking of her
poor dead calf, starved to death by her cruel master. She got well
herself, and came and went with the other cows, seemingly as happy as
they, but often when I watched her standing chewing her cud, and looking
away in the distance, I could see a difference between her face and the
faces of the cows that had always been happy on Dingley Farm. Even the
farm hands called her "Old Melancholy," and soon she got to be known by
that name, or Mel, for short. Until she got well, she was put into the
cow stable, where Mr. Wood's cows all stood at night upon raised
platforms of earth covered over with straw litter, and she was tied with
a Dutch halter, so that she could lie down and go to sleep when she
wanted to. When she got well, she was put out to pasture with the other
cows.
The horse they named "Scrub," because he could never be, under any
circumstance, anything but a broken-down, plain-looking animal. He was
put into the horse stable in a stall next Fleetfoot, and as the
partition was low, they could look over at each other. In time, by dint
of much doctoring, Scrub's hoofs became clean and sound, and he was able
to do some work.
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