e Provincials "string-beans," "polly-pods," "slam
bangs." They turned up their noses at our buckskin breeches, but when
it came to fighting we showed 'em what stuff we were made of. Don't
let 'em pick a quarrel, but don't take any sass from 'em. Do right by
everybody."

"I will try to do right," Robert replied.

The sun was rising the next morning when Robert gathered up the reins
and stood ready to step into the wagon which had been loaded for the
market.

"You have three dozen new milk cheeses," said Rachel, "and two and one
half dozen of four meal. I have marked the four meals with a cross in
the centre, so you'll know them from the new milk. There are sixteen
greened with sage. They look real pretty. I have put in half a dozen
skims; somebody may want 'em for toasting."

"You will find," said Mrs. Walden, "a web of linsey-woolsey in your
trunk with your best clothes, and a dozen skeins of wool yarn. It is
lamb's wool. I've doubled and twisted it, and I don't believe the
women will find in all Boston anything softer or nicer for stockings."

"I have put up six quarts of caraway seed," said Rachel. "I guess the
bakers will want it to put into gingerbread. And I have packed ten
dozen eggs in oats, in a basket. They are all fresh. You can use the
oats to bait Jenny with on your way home."

"There are two bushels of beans," said Mr. Walden, "in that bag,--the
one-hundred-and-one kind,--and a bushel and three pecks of clover seed
in the other bag. You can get a barrel of 'lasses, half a quintal of
codfish, half a barrel of mackerel, and a bag of Turk's Island salt."

"Don't forget," said Mrs. Walden, "that we want some pepper, spice,
cinnamon, nutmegs, cloves, and some of the very best Maccaboy snuff.
Oh, let me see! I want a new foot-stove. Our old one is all banged up,
and I am ashamed to be seen filling it at noon in winter in Deacon
Stonegood's kitchen, with all the women looking on, and theirs spick
and span new."

"Father and mother have told me what they want, and now what shall I
get for you, Rachel?" Robert asked of his sister.

"Anything you please, Rob," Rachel replied with such tender love in
her eyes that he had half a mind to kiss her. But kissing was not
common in Rumford or anywhere else in New England. Never had he seen
his father give his mother such a token of affection. He had a dim
recollection that his mother sometimes kissed him when he was a little
fellow in frock and trousers, sitting i