94 THE DAILY LIFE OF OUR FARM. 



open door. Alas ! that they know not how to stoop so 

 as to get out again the way they entered ! " Them 

 fills theirselves so much, them forgets the road," is the 

 gardener's solution of the difficulty. " I puts out as 

 many as I can, but I finds them continually dead about 

 in heaps." It is a pity that the industrious swarm 

 should suffer so, but whatever should we do ? It is 

 time to be painting the boat, which has rested the 

 winter through upon its carriage in the barn. The 

 salmon-fishing licence, price £1, has just arrived ; our 

 pools swarm with fish, but they don't often care to take 

 the fly ; whether it is that we are too near the sea or 

 not I don't know. They possibly have their baskets of 

 prog along with them, which last them until they reach 

 the upper w^aters. The greedy old dowagers in their 

 descent take freely enough. But the fresh-run clean 

 fish are mighty daintiful as regards the baits we present 

 for their acceptance. 



Owing to the late severe weather, our chickens' coops 

 are a positive workhouse, the surviving individuals of 

 ever so many separate broods having to be clubbed 

 together to make out a charge for a solitary hen. The 

 ducks are not over-industrious, laying an egg now and 

 then, as the whim takes them, while the turkeys have 

 not commenced at all. Geese I never rear, having 

 plenty in the household. I was much amused the other 

 day by the performance of a bantam which I had pur- 

 chased, being exceedingly tame, from an old woman by 

 the roadside, for the children. One of the little girls 

 was sitting on the grass with the bird in her lap, on a 

 nest of hay, which she had seductively twisted, when^ 

 lo and behold, after an agony on the bird's part, which 

 the child took for a fit, there was produced a new bright 



