scarce ever a letter: an’ all the change ever they got, just to look from the Bush to the sea an’ then back from the sea to the Bush: an’ the little children a-comin’ an’ a-comin’, with never no doctor to call;—well, my word! I didn’t think of it then, nor understand, but many’s the time since I’ve thought, an’ I reckon them women had pluck!
“As for us young ones, it was our part to bring in what wood we could for the cookin’ (you ever use black-pine bark nowadays? It’s the thing for bakin’—can’t be beat), an’ to gather mussels off of the rocks when the tide was low; aye, an’ many an’ many’s the fish I’ve a-caught an’ brought home for dinner from the Point there. There was two winter mornin’s I remember, us children found a frost-fish an’ brought home. Just a-layin’ there on the sand one was, all as quiet! for all the world like a long silver sash-ribbon. . . . Eh, I remember I did wish it was a sash . . . wouldn’t I ha’ got it round me quick if it had been! though a rare sight it would ha’ made, to be sure, a-tyin’ in a dungaree over-all. But that other fish, we saw that a-comin’ in; an’ it come in a-leapin’, an a-loopin’, and all in a flurry (nobody knows, you know, what fetches ’em ashore; only they comes of a frosty mornin’; nor there ain’t nobody as ever catched one with a hook or net, far as I’ve heard say); an’ that one, when we got it home, it was long enough to hang right from the top of our door to the bottom, six foot.
“Then we’d to see, us children, to the gardens. That was easy work, bless you! All you had to do in them days was, scratch up the soil where any logs had been burnt, or that was anyways clear in the
