able to fetch and carry easily.
Moreover, we had already a fair kitchen garden laid out, and there
were outhouses for pigs and poultry, so that even while draining and
fencing were going on, we raised a good proportion of our own
provisions, and very proud of them we were; our own mustard and
cress, which we sowed in our initials, tasted doubly sweet when we
reaped them as our earliest crop.

Mr. Newton had always said that some day he should drop down and see
how Charles was getting on, but as he hardly ever stirred from his
office in London, and only answered letters in the briefest and most
business-like way, we had pretty well left off expecting him.

We had been here about six months, and had killed our first pig--'a
pretty little porker as ever was seen,' as Betsey said. It was hard
to understand, after all the petting, admiration, and back-
scratching Betsey had bestowed on him, how ready she was to sentence
him, and triumph in his death; while I, feeble-minded creature,
delayed rising in the morning that I might cower under the
bedclothes and stop my ears against his dying squeals. However,
when he was no more, the housekeeping spirit triumphed in our
independence of the butcher, while his fry and other delicacies
lasted, and Betsey was supremely happy over the saltings of the
legs, etc., with a view to the more distant future.

It was a cold day of early spring. I had been down the lanes and
brought in five tiny starved primroses with short stems, for which
Betsey scolded me soundly, telling me that the first brood of
chickens was always the same in number as the first primroses
brought into the house. I eked them out with moss in a saucer, and
then, how well I remember the foolish, weary feeling that I wished
something would happen to break the quiet. We were out of the reach
of new books, and the two magazines we took in would not be due for
ten long days. I did not feel sensible or energetic enough to turn
to one of the standard well-bound volumes that had been Charlie's
school prizes, and at the moment I hated my needlework, both steady
sewing and fancy work. It was the same with my piano. I had no new
fashionable music, and I was in a mood to disdain what was good and
classical. So, as the twilight came on, I sat drearily by the fire,
fondling the cat--yes, this same black cat--and thinking that my
life at the ladies' college had been a good deal livelier, and that
if I had given it up for the