have all new by the time the girls grew up, to fit the new house.

Mr. Odell had a peach-orchard and a quince-orchard, and two long rows of
cherry-trees. Then he kept quite a herd of cows, and sold milk. He had a
splendid new barn, with two finished rooms in that, where the hands
slept in summer. The old barn was devoted to the hay and the horses.
There were chickens and ducks and geese, and a pen of pigs. This summer,
they were raising three pretty calves and one little colt, who was
desperately shy. But the calves would come up to be patted, and eat out
of your hand.

Both of the girls were what their mother called regular tomboys. Polly
was a few months older than the little girl, and Janey two years her
senior. They were smart too. They could wash dishes and make beds and
sweep, weed in the garden, look after the poultry; and Janey could iron
almost as well as her mother. But they did love to run and whoop, and
tumble in the hay, and they laughed over almost everything. They were
not great students, though they went to school regularly.

A second or third cousin lived with the Odells, and did a great deal of
the housework. She was not "real bright," and had some queer ways. Her
immediate relatives were dead; and the Odells had taken her from a
feeling of pity, and a fear lest at last she would be sent to the
poor-house. She had an odd way of talking incoherently to herself, and
nodding her head at almost everything; yet she was good-tempered and
always ready to do as she was told. But the worst was her lack of
memory; you had to tell her the same things everyday,--"get her started
in the traces," Mr. Odell said.

Mrs. Odell put a cot in the girls' room for Hanny, since there was
plenty of space. And Polly seemed to find so many funny stories to tell
over that Hanny fell asleep in the midst of them, and woke up in the
morning without a bit of homesick feeling. Then Mr. Odell was going to
the mill, and he took Polly and Hanny along, and they had a rather
amusing time.

Hanny was very much interested in the process, and amazed when she found
how they made the different things out of the same wheat. They used
"middlings" for pancakes at home, when her mother was tired of
buckwheat. Not to have had griddle-cakes for breakfast would have been
one of the hardest trials of life for men and boys through the winter.
It warmed them up of a cold morning, and they seemed to thrive on it.

Mr. Odell was very willing to exp