THE FARM-HOUSE. 
157 
return for tlie cost and labor required to plant and look after 
them. 
Passing the barn, we looked in there also ; a load of sweet hay 
had just been thrown into the loft, and another was coming up 
the road at the moment. Mr. B worked his farm with a pair 
of horses only, keeping no oxen. Half a dozen hens and some 
geese were the only poultry in the yard ; the eggs and feathers 
were carried, in the fall, to the store at B Green, or some- 
times as far as our own village. 
They kept four cows ; formerly they had had a much larger 
dairy ; but our hostess had counted her threescore and ten, and 
being the only woman in the house, the dairy-work of four cows, 
she said, was as much as she could well attend to. One would think 
so ; for she also did all the cooking, baking, washing, ironing, and 
cleaning for the family, consisting of three persons ; besides a 
share of the sewmg, knitting, and spinning. We went into her 
little buttery ; here the bright tin pans were standing full of rich 
milk ; everything was thoroughly scoured, beautifully fresh, and 
neat, A stone jar of fine yellow butter, whose flavor we knew 
of old, stood on one side, and several cheeses were in press. The 
wood-work was all painted red. 
While our kind hostess, on hospitable thought intent, was pre- 
paring something nice for tea, we were invited to look about the 
little sitting-room, and see " farm ways" in that shape. It was 
both parlor and guest-chamber at the same time. In one corner 
stood a maple bedstead, with a large, plump feather bed on it, 
and two tiny pillows in well-bleached cases at the head. The 
walls of the room were whitewashed, the wood-work was un- 
painted, but so thoroughly scoured, that it had acquired a sort of 
