It was all dining-room work; and we were chatty over it, as if we had
sat down to wind worsteds; and there was no kitchen in the house that
morning.

We kept our butter and milk in the brick buttery at the foot of the
kitchen stairs. These were all we had to go up and down for. Barbara
set away the milk, and skimmed the cream, and brought up and scalded
the yesterday's pans the first thing; and they were out in a
row--flashing up saucily at the sun and giving as good as he sent--on
the back platform.

She and Rosamond were up stairs, making beds and setting straight; and
in an hour after breakfast the house was in its beautiful forenoon
order, and there was a forenoon of three hours to come.

We had chickens for dinner that day, I remember; one always does
remember what was for dinner the first day in a new house, or in new
housekeeping. William, the chore-man, had killed and picked and drawn
them, on Saturday; I do not mean to disguise that we avoided these
last processes; we preferred a little foresight of arrangement. They
were hanging in the buttery, with their hearts and livers inside them;
mother does not believe in gizzards. They only wanted a little salt
bath before cooking.

I should like to have had you see Mrs. Holabird tie up those chickens.
They were as white and nice as her own hands; and their legs and wings
were fastened down to their sides, so that they were as round and
comfortable as dumplings before she had done with them; and she laid
them out of her two little palms into the pan in a cunning and cosey
way that gave them a relish beforehand, and sublimated the vulgar