COTTAGE IDEAS. 193 



been glad to have her in her household. She had been 

 in farmhouse service from girlhood, and had doubtless 

 learned much from good housewives ; farmers' wives are 

 the best of all teachers : and the girls, for their own 

 sakes, had much better be under them than wasting so 

 much time learning useless knowledge at compulsory- 

 schools. 



Freckles said, when he came in, 

 He never would enter a tawny skin, 



was another of her rhymes. Freckles come in with 

 summer, but never appear on a dark skin, so that the 

 freckled should rejoice in these signs of fairness. 



Your father, the elderberry, 

 Was not such a gooseberry 

 As to send in his bilberry 

 Before it was dewberry. 



Some children are liable to an unpleasant complaint 

 at night ; for this there is a certain remedy. A mouse 

 is baked in the oven to a ' scrump,' then pounded to 

 powder, and this powder administered. Many ladies 

 still have faith in this curious medicine ; it reminds one 

 of the powdered mummy, once the great cure of human 

 ills. Country places have not always got romantic 

 names — Wapse's Farm, for instance, and Hog's Pudding 

 Farm. Wapse is the provincial for wasp. 



Country girls are not all so shrewd as Louisa : we 

 heard of two — this was some time since — who, being in 

 service in London, paid ten shillings each to Madame 

 Rachel for a bath to be made beautiful for ever. Half 

 a sovereign out of their few coins ! On the other hand, 

 town servants are well dressed and have plenty of finery, 

 but seldom have any reserve of good clothing, such as 

 Louisa possessed. All who know the country regret 

 the change that has been gradually coming over the 



O 



