Dinner done, the harvest-hands take a brief “spell” upon the lounges, while the rest of us clear away, and wash the dishes. Then, back they go to the paddock, Eva this time with them, Mother resumes her mending, and Nance and I proceed to bottle “barm,” Nance enlivening the task with a sketch of the family fortunes.
“At first, you know,” she says, “we’d terrible luck up here. The cows would get milk fever, and the pigs took bad, and oh! we knew so little about it all! Then we’d a horrible scare about codlin moth (though I’m thankful to say that didn’t come off); and then, for two years running, we lost all the potatoes with blight. Next, the kitchen-shed caught fire—nobody knows how; and it burnt right down, and Dad had thought he could do without insuring. Luckily, it was like this one, right away from the house, but oh! the dairy nearly went as well! The water sizzled as we threw it on the walls, and once Bruv, who was drawing up the bucket from the well close by, gasped out, ‘I can’t stand it any longer’—he was only sixteen. But Dad, who was really right inside the dairy, all smothered up in the smoke, shouted out to him, and said, ‘We Must!’ So, he did. I can see poor old Dad’s face now. Oh, I was sorry for him that time; it fair broke him up—if the place had all gone, he’d have died, I do believe. Of course, to us kiddies it didn’t really matter much—we didn’t know enough, for one thing, and for another, as Sandy said, it was such a change! Anyway, you can pretty well always think how much worse things might have been, can’t you?
“Oh, yes, thanks, they’re ever so much easier
