ng after
the past, when the lambs would fall a-bleating for their mothers, and
calves would hang about the gate at evening, where they had often
fought shamelessly to get a frothy nose once more into the milk-pail.

Our little gardens were full a-blow, a very blaze and maze of colour
and foliage, wherein the owner wandered of an evening examining flowers
and fruit with many and prolonged speculations--much aided by the smoke
of tobacco--as to the chance of gaining a second at our horticultural
show with his stocks, or honourable mention for a dish of mixed fruit.
The good wife might be seen of an afternoon about that time, in a
sun-bonnet and a gown carefully tucked up, gathering her berry harvest
for preserves, with two young assistants, who worked at a modest
distance from their mother, very black as to their mouths, and
preserving the currants, as they plucked them, by an instantaneous
process of their own invention. Next afternoon a tempting fragrance of
boiling sugar would make one's mouth water as he passed, and the same
assistants, never weary in well-doing, might be seen setting saucers of
black jam upon the window-sill to "jeel," and receiving, as a kind of
blackmail, another saucerful of "skim," which, I am informed, is really
the refuse of the sugar, but, for all that, wonderfully toothsome.
Bear with a countryman's petty foolishness, ye mighty people who live
in cities, and whose dainties come from huge manufactories. Some man
reading these pages will remember that red-letter day of the
summer-time long ago, and the faithful hands that plucked the fruit,
and the old kitchen, with its open beams, and the peat fire glowing
red, and the iron arm that held the copper-lined pan--much lent round
the district--and the smack of the hot, sweet berries, more grateful
than any banquet of later days.

[Illustration: Gathering her berry harvest.]

The bees worked hard in this time of affluence, and came staggering
home with spoil from the hills, but it was holiday season on the farms.
Between the last labours on the roots and the beginning of harvest
there was no exacting demand from the land, and managing farmers
invented tasks to fill up the hours. An effort was made to restore
carts and implements to their original colour, which was abruptly
interrupted by the first day of cutting, so that one was not surprised
to see a harvest cart blue on one side and a rich crusted brown on the
other. Drumsheugh would even s