"I didn't know anything about it," said Betsy. "Tell me about it."

"Why you knew, didn't you--your Aunt Harriet must have told you--about
how our folks came up here from Connecticut in 1763, on horseback!
Connecticut was an old settled place then, compared to Vermont. There
wasn't anything here but trees and bears and wood-pigeons. I've heard
'em say that the wood-pigeons were so thick you could go out after dark
and club 'em out of the trees, just like hens roosting in a hen-house.
There always was cold pigeon-pie in the pantry, just the way we have
doughnuts. And they used bear-grease to grease their boots and their
hair, bears were so plenty. It sounds like good eating, don't it! But of
course that was just at first. It got quite settled up before long, and
by the time of the Revolution, bears were getting pretty scarce, and
soon the wood-pigeons were all gone."

"And the schoolhouse--that schoolhouse where I went today--was that
built THEN?" Elizabeth Ann found it hard to believe.

"Yes, it used to have a great big chimney and fireplace in it. It was
built long before stoves were invented, you know."

"Why, I thought stoves were ALWAYS invented!" cried Elizabeth Ann. This
was the most startling and interesting conversation she had ever taken
part in.

Aunt Abigail laughed. "Mercy, no, child! Why, _I_ can remember when only
folks that were pretty well off had stoves and real poor people still
cooked over a hearth fire. I always thought it a pity they tore down the
big chimney and fireplace out of the schoolhouse and put in that big,
ugly stove. But folks are so daft over new-fangled things. Well, anyhow,