“Not so remarkable, really. I just love what I do, and so I throw myself into it with everything I can. But first you must take off those shoes of yours. I’ve an extra pair of rubber boots over there in the corner. Change into them, and then come—sit down here. We’ve only six or eight more to do, and you will milk Gerta.”

Thaddeus changed his shoes, then with a look more of fear than of enthusiasm, approached and sat down on the stool, listened to the baron’s instructions as he set a fresh wide bucket under the cow, and watched as he demonstrated. Then he timidly reached out to Gerta’s plump udder and took the first teat between his fingers.

“Now, pull and squeeze,” said the baron. “That’s it, in a firm downward motion.”

A tiny, thin line of milk dribbled out and sprayed against Thaddeus’s leg. He groaned.

“Not bad for a first effort!” laughed the baron. “Once you get the milk coming in a good flow, then you can get your aim perfected so that it goes into the bucket!”

Thaddeus tried again, this time coaxing a little more warm milk from Gerta’s full supply, but without much improvement of direction. The toe of his boot was suddenly white and wet.

“Agh!” he exclaimed with a laugh. “I don’t think I’m cut out for this, Baron!”

“You’ll have it in no time. Just keep at it, while I take care of Toni down here.”

Gradually the metallic echo in the bucket indicated that Thaddeus was finding his mark, and in another five minutes or so the regular streams from between his fingers were splashing into a rising level of milk instead of merely sounding against the bottom of an empty container.

“I can hear from the sound of it that milk is accumulating, Thaddeus,” said the baron, finishing Toni and moving down the line. “You must be doing fine.”

“I’m sure Gerta knows she’s in the hands of an amateur,” rejoined McCallum, “though I do have to admit it’s not so bad. I’ve never done anything like this in my life!”

Within the hour, Thaddeus was moving from teat to teat, then from cow to cow down the row, not exactly as if he had been doing it for years, but with far less faintheartedness than when he first sat down next to Gerta’s imposing girth. As he did, he heard the baron fiddling with suction cups and rubber tubing, moving back and forth between the cows and an electric pump which apparently operated the device.

At length they met one another at adjacent cows. The baron turned off the milking device, finished up his cow by hand, and announced, “We’ve done it, Thaddeus. You were a big help!”

“I don’t know about that. I only did four cows.”