Page:Middle Aged Love Stories (IA middleagedlove00bacorich).djvu/296



“Now my mother,” she began, “she was wonderful, if you like. Do you know what my mother used to do? We lived on the farm, you know, like yours, and most of the work of that farm mother did. She did the cooking—for all the hired hands, too; she made the butter, and took care of the hens; she made the candles and the soap; she made the carpets and all our clothes—my brothers’, too; and she put up preserves and jellies and cordials, and did the most beautiful embroidery; I have some of mother’s embroidered collars, and I can’t do anything like them.”

“It was tremendous,” he said. “My Aunt Delia did that, too.”

“We were old-fashioned, even for then,” she said. “Everybody didn’t do so much, of course, as we did. Lizzie says we were just on the edge of the new age. It certainly is different. And of course I wouldn’t go back to it for anything. After we came back from boarding-