My sister Mary Jane is older than I,--as much as four years. Father
died when we were both small, and didn't leave us much means beside
the farm. Mother was rather a weakly woman; she didn't feel as though
she could farm it for a living. It's hard work enough for a man to get
clothes and victuals off a farm in West Connecticut; it's up-hill work
always; and then a man can turn to, himself, to ploughin' and
mowin';--but a woman a'n't of no use, except to tell folks what to do;
and everybody knows it's no way to have a thing done, to send.

Mother talked it all over with Deacon Peters, and he counselled her to
sell off all the farm but the home-lot, which was sot out for an
orchard with young apple-trees, and had a garden-spot to one end of
it, close by the house. Mother calculated to raise potatoes and beans
and onions enough to last us the year round, and to take in sewin'
so's to get what few groceries we was goin' to want. We kept Old Red,
the best cow; there was pasture enough for her in the orchard, for the
trees wa'n't growed to be bearin' as yet, and we 'lotted a good deal
on milk to our house; besides, it saved butcher's meat.

Mother was a real pious woman, and she was a high-couraged woman too.
Old Miss Perrit, an old widder-woman that lived down by the bridge,
come up to see her the week after father died. I remember all about
it, though I wa'n't but ten years old; for when I see Miss Perrit
comin' up the road, with her slimpsy old veil hanging off from her
bumbazine bonnet, and her doleful look, (what Nancy Perrit used to
call "mother's company-face,") I kinder thought she was comin' to our
house; and she was allers so musical to me, I went in to the
back-door, and took up a towel I was hemmin', and set down in the
corner, all ready to let her in. It don't seem as if I could 'a' been
real distressed about father's dyin' when I could do so; but children