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 on the horsepond; and a few turkeys ranged in the surrounding fields and grew fat on the corn and alfalfa for miles around.

This was the center of the universe for the Pippinger children. Here they played the games that they had learned in the schoolyard: "Blind Man's Buff," "Tag," "Tom, Tom, pull away," and "Little Sally Waters." They made playhouses in fence corners where they treasured up bits of colored glass and stones glittering with mica. They hunted for the eggs of hens that had stolen their nests. They stalked the turkeys to find out where they were laying the precious turkey eggs. They stood around their mother as she churned and with greedy little fingers scraped off the spattered blobs of butter as they appeared on the dasher stick and the churn top. When house-cleaning time was come and their mother had the front room carpet out on the line, they crept in between its dusty folds and crawled gleefully up and down making the mild April evening vibrant with their shouts and laughter. They gathered wild raspberries and blackberries in summer and in autumn hickory nuts and black walnuts. They brought up the cows for the milking and exemplified the phrase, "Straight from producer to consumer," by milking into their own mouths. They made dandelion chains in spring and burr baskets in autumn and scattered the silky fluff of ripe milkweed pods into the sunny autumn air. They held buttercups under each other's chins to see if they liked butter. They quarreled over the possession of playthings and other subjects of childish dispute. Sometimes they fought savagely and kicked each other's shins and made vigorous attempts to scratch and bite, then ran crying and complaining to their mother.

A radius of some eight or ten miles about the farm formed their entire world. Within this circle was Clayton, the source of groceries, candy and Christmas toys, as were also the homes of the various grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins with whom they visited. Almost every Sunday, and sometimes on a week day, Bill would hitch up Tom and Bob to the spring wagon as soon as the morning chores were done, and the whole family, dressed in clean denim and starched calico, would jog