" He balanced a tin pail carefully
between the two crossed sticks in the heart of the fire, and
unfolded from a newspaper two wedges of pumpkin-pie. In William
Thayer's little basket was a large piece of cheese.
"It's coffee 'n milk mixed together; they had bottles of it," he
explained. "William Thayer 'll take back the pail. Are you hungry?"
Caroline nodded.
"Awful," she stated briefly.
"Well, then," he said with satisfaction, "let's begin."
Caroline attacked a sandwich, with shining eyes, and when in another
minute the boy took from his pocket a tin ring that slipped
miraculously out of itself into a jointed cup, and dipped her a mug
of hot coffee from the bubbling pail, she realized with a pang of
joy that this was, beyond any question, the master moment of her
life.
"I take this along," he explained, "so's when I go by, and they're
milking, I can have some warm. Anybody'd give me all I want if
William Thayer dances and drops dead for 'em. It tastes good early
in the morning, I tell you."
She sighed with pleasure. To drink warm milk in the cool, early
dawn, with the cows about you, and the long, sweet day free before!
They sipped turn about; the boy divided the orange mathematically;
the pie was filled with fruit of the Hesperides.
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