Would he accept me as a partner? The suggestion came from myself. The clerk, of course, had never dreamed of such a thing. They might welcome me, the clerk thought. Very kindly, he said he would sound Cooper about it and let me know....
The scheme seemed such a perfect solution of my problem of earning a living, that I was afraid up to the last moment something must happen to prevent it. Cooper would die, or change his mind, or one of my influential business friends would warn me not to do it. I was so jealous of interference that I sought no advice. Without so much as a scratch of the pen between us the enterprise started. So heartily did I like and trust my partner that when, later, wiser friends inquired about my contract with him, it infuriated me. "Contract! A contract with Alfred Cooper!"
We did a roaring trade at first. Our Jersey milk was beyond all question the best in the town. It was honest, unwatered milk, and our cream, without any preservative added, was so prized that we soon had more orders than we could fill. Why our milk and cream soured so readily, losing us trade rapidly later, is a mystery to me to this day.
Within a few weeks of our starting business, Cooper convinced me that a model dairy building on the farm would be a desirable improvement; it would save labour in various ways; it was built. The farm belonged to his mother, not to him; he kept the building when our collapse followed. Next, his sister really must have someone to help her, and that someone was provided at high wages. Business was good, so good in fact that we could not supply orders. Extra milk must therefore be bought from neighbouring farmers. This was done, the contracts being made by Cooper. I never asked to see them. The bills were paid every month without question on my part. More grazing fields, with enough artificial food to feed at least a hundred cows in addition, these too had to be paid for. As for the appetites of our forty
animals, I marvelled at them long before I became sus-
