The people were going to church in their
holiday clothes, and eyed the uncouth stranger askance. I travelled
the whole length of the town thinking what to do next. My stomach
decided for me. There was a house standing in a pretty garden with
two little cast-iron negro boys for hitching-posts at the steps. I
rang the bell, and to an old lady who opened the door I offered to
chop wood, fetch water, or do anything there was to do in exchange
for breakfast. She went in and brought out her husband, who looked
me over and said that if I was willing to do his chores I need go
no farther. I was tired and famished, and the place was so restful
that I said yes at once. In ten minutes I was eating my breakfast
in the kitchen, duly installed as Dr. Spencer's hired man.
I think of the month I spent in the doctor's house with mingled
feelings of exasperation and amusement. If I had not learned to
milk a cow there, probably Octavia Ely would never have come into
my life, horrid nightmare that she was. Octavia Ely was a Jersey
cow with a brass tag in her ear, whose attacks upon the domestic
peace of my house in after years even now fill me with rage.
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