Young Bleys - Childe Cycle 09 by Gordon R. Dickson Page A

didn't see it die then," Henry was asking Joshua.
    "No, Father."
    "That means you didn't see the rail come loose and fall down to trap her?" "No, Father."
    "One of our best milk goats." There was a regretful note in Henry's voice; and he seemed to be speaking more to himself than to Joshua. He looked up at his son.
    "Well," he said, "you won't let a loose rail like that happen again, will you?"
    "No, Father."
    "Yes. Well, see me after dinner then." Henry got to his feet. "You can go back to work, son."
    Joshua turned and went out the door without looking at Bleys. Henry caught sight of him and beckoned him over to the table where, Bleys saw, there were a number of slips of paper spread out.
    "Bleys," said Henry, then interrupted himself, "—take those things your brother must have bought you into your own room and leave them on your bunk. Then come back here. I've got some questions I want to ask you."
    Bleys did as he was told. When he got back, Henry was seated in the chair again, apparently sorting the slips which he had laid out in rows stretching away from him, like the cards in a game of solitaire.
    "Bleys," said Henry, looking up as Bleys appeared, "these are the records each day for each milk goat as to how much milk they gave. They vary in amount, but also in quality. Is there anything in the mathematics you say you learned in school that would help me figure out which are the most profitable of my milk goats?"
    Bleys looked at the slips. Each was simply a small piece of paper with a date, a name—which he assumed was the name of the goat—and a figure that must be for the amount of milk mat animal had produced.
    "Are those figures volume or weight, Uncle?" he asked.
    "Volume—oh, I see," said Henry, "yes, they're the number of liters and part-liters we got from each one. Why?"
    "I just thought ..." Bleys hesitated. He was raking through the back of his mind, putting together several things picked up from different people at different places and different times. "If you weighed the milk they gave each morning, instead of just measuring it, you might be able to get an idea of how rich it was. I think the richer the milk the more fat mere is in it. So kilogram for kilogram the goat giving richer milk should be worth more."
    He hesitated again.
    "I think that's right, Uncle," he said, "I can't be sure.
    Maybe there're other ways, other things that have to do with whether it makes more cheese or not—the milk I mean."
    "Hmmm ..." said Henry, "it's a possibility. I can go to the district library and ask them if weight is a measure of whether goat milk makes better cheese, or not. But there's still the problem of comparing goat to goat."
    "You could make a spreadsheet for that, Uncle," said Bleys, a little more boldly. One of the men who had lived with his mother for a while had shown him how to make a spreadsheet. But it had been done on a screen, working with a keyboard.
    Still, possibly the same thing could be done simply with a pencil and a piece of paper.
    "You put all the names of the goats across the top of a sheet," said Bleys, "then you put the dates down in the left-hand column and list the amount of milk each day under each goat that gives it, so that at the end of the year you can get totals. Maybe even just the totals could tell you something."
    "Yes," said Henry, still looking at the slips of paper, "I can ask about that, too. You may have been very helpful, Bleys. I thank the Lord for your trying, however."
    "I thank the Lord you have found me useful, Uncle," said Bleys. Henry looked at him; and Bleys found himself on the receiving end of one of the wintry smiles. But it only lasted for a few seconds.
    "Well, that's enough of that," Henry said, abruptly. "Will cleaned up after lunch; but there must be a good deal of other work around the house that wasn't done because you left so early and just now got back. You should get busy at it right now."
    "Yes, Uncle," said Bleys and went off toward the closet