THE DAILY LIFE OF OUR FARM. 63 



" Oh, my dear mother, do let me alone ! I've got to 

 finish this writing by post- time." 



She is leaning over me, enlarging on the past, pre- 

 sent, and future (as the respected old Athenian poets 

 used to say) of some party that I really don't take the 

 least interest in, inasmuch as I don't know who it is. 



" Well, I'm going." And as she goes, in her energetic 

 laudation of some one whom she has been praising the 

 last half-hour, but whose name escaped me, as I cannot, 

 like the First Napoleon, talk, write, and listen at once, 

 I start at her emphatic whisper, " He's a man that 

 drinks nothing but water." 



" My stars be thanked ! I don't. I have already too 

 large a per-centage of that precious element in my 

 natural system, if one is to believe the explanation of 

 analysts. Water's a very good thing in its place ; and 

 I wish it wouldn't leave us so treacherously as it does 

 sometimes, in summer, on these red-sandstone rocks. 



Alas ! that poisoned pool I spoke of in my last ! 

 We have had to let off the main part of it, after all — 

 it had grown so foul in tint and taste. My bailiff, 

 being of a thrifty turn, had it guided on to a plot 

 of cabbage-plants, all of which I now expect to see 

 brought up to table as guiltily dyed as the bone of 

 madder-fed poultry is said to be. 



And the dear little ducks are dropping in daily — a 

 yard further down, by the way, than they need have 

 done — from the hatching-nests under the thorn-heaps 

 along the banks. We have already a good store, and 

 have been hitherto successful in the rearing. It makes 

 one's teeth water to think of the Sunday dinners a 

 little later on. 



I had been cantering through my ewe-flock yester- 



