An American girl who married a Bavarian baron enjoyed playing Lady Bountiful among the tenants on her husband's estate. On the death of the wife of one of the cottagers, she called to condole with the bereaved widower. She uttered her formal expressions of sympathy with him in his grief over the loss of his wife, and she was then much disconcerted by his terse optimistic comment:
"But it's a good thing, your ladyship, that it wasn't the cow."