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 toa ‘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 
oO 
