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“I think people say that, because it looks like a green cheese,” she said “But appearances are deceiving” Then while she wiped all the green cheeses and rubbed them with butter, she told them about the dead, cold rows

The first day Ma made cheese, Laura tasted the whey She tasted it without saying anything to Ma, and when Ma turned around and saw her face, Ma laughed That night while she ashing the supper dishes and Mary and Laura iping them, Ma told Pa that Laura had tasted the whey and didn’t like it

“You wouldn’t starve to death on Ma’s whey, like old Grimes did on his wife’s,” Pa said

Laura begged hih Pa was tired, he took his fiddle out of its box and played and sang for Laura:

“Old Griood old man,

We ne’er shall see him more,

He used to wear an old gray coat,

All buttoned down before

“Old Grimeses’ wife made skim-milk cheese,

Old Grimes, he drank the whey,

There came an east wind from the west,

And blew Old Grimes away”

“There you have it!” said Pa “She was a ht-fisted woman If she hadn’t skimmed all the milk, a little creaht have staggered along

“But she skiot so thin the wind blew him away Plumb starved to death”

Then Pa looked at Ma and said, “Nobody’d starve to death when you were around, Caroline”