Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 8.djvu/200

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��One Summer. A Reminiscence.

��began to turn the windlass-like machine, to bring the weights down.

"Now," said she, "I shall let this stay in press all day, then I shall put it in pickle for twenty-four hours. The next night I shall rub it dry with a towel, and put it up in the cheese- room. Now comes the tug-o'-war ! I have to watch them close to keep the flies out."

The forerunners of autumn had already touched the hillsides, and my thoughts were turning homeward, when one Saturday morning Mr. Wetherell came in and said : " Miss Douglass, don't you want to ride up to the paster ? I'm going up to salt the steers."

Mrs. Wetherell hastened to add : " Yes, you go ; you hain't had a ride since you been here. Old Darby ain't fast, but he 's good."

Eagerly I accepted the invitation, and in a few minutes we set off.

Darby was a great strong white horse, with minute brown spots all over him. Mr. Wetherell told me stories of all the people, as Darby shuffled by their houses, raising a big cloud of dust.

When we came to a sandy stretch of road, Mr. Wetherell said : " This is what we call the Plains. Here is where we used to have May trainings, years and years ago. Once they had a sham- fight, and I thought I should have died a-laughing. I was nothing but a boy. We always thought so much of the gingerbread we got at training ; I used to save my money to spend on that day. Once, when I was about thirteen year old, a passel of us boys got together to talk over training. Jim Barrows said that old Miss Hammet (she lived over behind the hill there) had got a cake baked, with plums in it,

��for training, and was going to have five cents a slice for it. He said : ' Now, if the rest of you will go into the house and talk with her, I will climb into the foreroom window, and hook the cake out of the three-cornered cupboard.' We all agreed. I went in, and com- menced to talk with the old woman ; some of the boys leaned up against the door that opened into the foreroom. After a Uttle while we went out and met Jim, down by the spring, and we ate the cake. Some way a-nother it did n't taste so good as we expected. There was an awful outscreech when she found it out. Jim was a mighty smart fellar. He married a girl from Cranberry Medder, and they went down East. I have heard that they were doing fust- rate."

After riding for some time through low, woody places, where the grass grew on each side of the horse's track, we came to the main traveled road. Thistles were blooming and going to seed, all on one stock. Flax-birds were flying among them filling the air with their sweet notes. Soon we turned into a lane, and came to the pasture-bars. Mr. Wetherell said : " You stay here with Darby, and I will drive the steers up to the bars, and salt them."

I got out of the wagon, and unchecked Darby's head, and led him up to a plot of white clover, to get a lunch. Nature seemed to have made an uneven distribution of foretop and • fetlock in Darby's case, his foretop was so scanty and his fetlocks so heavy. A fringe of long hairs stood out on his forelegs from his body to his feet, giving him quite a savage look. As I looked down at his large flat feet, I felt glad that he did n't have to travel over macadamized roads.

I sat down on some logs which were

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