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For a moment Martha Norris watched the receding figure through blinding tears. “Oh, Sammy, I’m going to have you back again! I’m going to have my boy once more!” she half sobbed. Then sitting down on the doorsill, she laughed like a schoolgirl until the cow with her extraordinary burden, and old Billy in her wake, disappeared up the road. [This incident actually occurred on an Ontario farm within the circle of the author’s acquaintance.]

From the pillow, pretty Della could just see out of the low window, and her wide young eyes grew wider with amazement as the gate swung open and the “circus,” as Jim called it, entered.

“Sammy!” she called, “Sammy! For goodness sake, what’s that coming into our yard?”

Instantly Sam was at the door.

“Well, if that don’t beat anything I ever saw!” he exclaimed. Then “like mother, like son,” he, too, sat down on the doorsill and laughed as only youth and health and joy can laugh, for, heading straight for the door was the fat young Shorthorn, saddled with an enormous feather-bed, and plodding at her heels was old Billy Norris, grinning sheepishly.

It took just three seconds for the hands of father and son to meet. “How’s my gal an’ my grandson?” asked the old farmer, excitedly.

“Bully, just bully, both of them!” smiled Sam, proudly. Then more seriously, “Ah, dad, you old tornado, you! Here you fired thunder at us for a whole year, pretty near broke my mother’s heart, and made my boy’s little mother old before she ought to be. But you’ve quit storming now, dad. I know it from the look of you.”

“Quit forever, Sam,” replied old Billy, “fer these mother-wimmen don’t never thrive where there’s rough weather, somehow. They’re all fer peace. They’re worse than King Edward an’ Teddy Roosevelt fer patchin’ up rows, an’ if they can’t do it no other way, they jes’ hike along with a baby, sort o’ treaty of peace like. Yes, I guess I thundered some; but, Sam, boy, there ain’t a deal of harm in thunder–but lightnin’, now that’s the worst, but I once heard a feller say that feathers was non-conductive.” Then with a sly smile, “An’ Sam, you’d better hustle an’ git the gal an’ the baby on ter this here feather-bed, or they may be in danger of gittin’ struck, fer there’s no tellin’ but I may jes’ start an’ storm thunder an’ lightnin’ this time.”