XXIV STORY OF A CHURN

There was a woman renowned for making the best of good butter.

Now it chanced in the spring that her man had three boys hired for to work at the setting of spuds. One morning they passed through the house when the churn was a making, and not one put his hand to the work nor uttered a blessing upon it.

Herself was horrid annoyed to think they’d be that unseemly and ignorant, yet she passed no remark of the sort. Didn’t her whole morning’s work go to loss for no yield come on the churn.

She was not very great with her neighbours, and the first time she chanced for to [194]speak of what happened that day was next time she seen her own mother.

The old woman says: “If you have one of them three lads impeached for taking the yield from the churn, let you write his name backwards on a small slip of paper and burn it in a shovel over the fire.”

“What good’ll that be?” asks the daughter.

“It will be the means of restoring the butter was lifted away,” says the mother.

“I doubt not—and it two months and more since the loss,” says the young woman.

But she brought out the paper and ink for to write down the name of the lad she impeached. She set it down backwards and burnt it over the fire.

“Now,” says the mother, “go out to the churn.”

What did she find only five pounds of butter sitting within on the dry wood!