pastures; the butter and cheese making was over, and the autumn work
was now to be done. Do you want to know what the autumn work was, and
how Jeannette could help about it? I will tell you. You must know that
a little way down the mountain-side is a grove of chestnut-trees. Did
you ever see the chestnut-trees? They grow in our woods, and on
the shores of some ponds. In the spring they are covered with long,
yellowish blossoms, and all through the hot summer those blossoms are
at work, turning into sweet chestnuts, wrapped safely in round, thorny
balls, which will prick your fingers sadly if you don't take care. But
when the frost of the autumn nights comes, it cracks open the prickly
ball and shows a shining brown nut inside; then, if we are careful,
we may pull off the covering and take out the nut. Sometimes, indeed,
there are two, three, or four nuts in one shell; I have found them so
myself.

Now the autumn work, which I said I would tell you about, is to gather
these chestnuts and store them away,--some to be eaten, boiled or
roasted, by the bright fire in the cold winter days that are coming;
and some to be nicely packed in great bags, and carried on the donkey
down to the town to be sold. The boys of New England, too, know what
good fun it is to gather nuts in the fall, and spread them over the
garret floor to dry, and at last to crack and eat them by the winter
hearth. So when the father says one night at supper-time, "It is
growing cold; I think there will be a frost to-night," Jeannette knows
very well what to do; and she dances away right early in the evening
to her little bed, which is made in a wooden box built up against the
side of the wall, and falls asleep to dream about the chestnut woods,
and the squirrels, and the little brook that leaps and springs from
rock to rock down under the tall, dark trees.