meant a busy time with a round of duties. It must have been all
these varying duties which prevented home from ever being monotonous.
All along the way the farmers were digging potatoes, and probably they
would be doing likewise at her home. That meant that they must begin
immediately to grate potatoes and make potato flour. The autumn had been
a mild one; she wondered if everything in the garden had already been
stored. The cabbages were still out, but perhaps the hops had been
picked, and all the apples.

It would be well if they were not having house cleaning at home. Autumn
fair time was drawing nigh, everywhere the cleaning and scouring had to
be done before the fair opened. That was regarded as a great event--more
especially by the servants. It was a pleasure to go into the kitchen on
Market Eve and see the newly scoured floor strewn with juniper twigs,
the whitewashed walls and the shining copper utensils which were
suspended from the ceiling.

Even after the fair festivities were over there would not be much of a
breathing spell, for then came the work on the flax. During dog days the
flax had been spread out on a meadow to mould. Now it was laid in the
old bath house, where the stove was lighted to dry it out. When it was
dry enough to handle all the women in the neighbourhood were called
together. They sat outside the bath house and picked the flax to pieces.
Then they beat it with swingles, to separate the fine white fibres from
the dry stems. As they worked, the women grew gray with dust; their hair
and clothing were covered with flax seed, but they did not seem to mind
it. All day the swingles pounded, and the chatter went on, so that when
one went near the old bath house it sounded as if a blustering storm had
broken loose there.

After the work with the flax, came the big hard-tack baking, the sheep
shearing, and the servants' moving time. In November there were busy
slaughter days, with salting of meats, sausage making, baking of blood
pudding, and candle steeping. The seamstress who used to make up their
homespun dresses had to come at this time, of course, and those were
always two pleasant weeks--when the women folk sat together and busied
themselves with sewing. The cobbler, who made shoes for the entire
household, sat working at the same time in the men-servants' quarters,
and one never tired of watching him as he cut the leather and soled and
heeled the shoes and put eyelets in the shoestring ho