Whenever the weather was sufficiently mild, it was used as a "nooning"
tree by all the men at work in the surrounding fields; but it was in haying
time that it became the favorite lunching and "bangeing" place for Squire
Bean's hands and those of Miss Vilda Cummins, who owned the adjoining farm.
The men congregated under the spreading branches at twelve o' the clock,
and spent the noon hour there, eating and "swapping" stories, as they
were doing to-day.

Each had a tin pail, and each consumed a quantity of "flour food"
that kept the housewives busy at the cook stove from morning till night.
A glance at Pitt Packard's luncheon, for instance, might suffice
as an illustration, for, as Jabe Slocum said, "Pitt took after
both his parents; one et a good deal, 'n' the other a good while."
His pail contained four doughnuts, a quarter section of pie,
six buttermilk biscuits, six ginger cookies, a baked cup custard,
and a quart of cold coffee. This quantity was a trifle unusual,
but every man in the group was lined throughout with pie,
cemented with buttermilk bread, and riveted with doughnuts.

Jabe Slocum and Brad Gibson lay extended slouchingly,
their cowhide boots turned up to the sky; Dave Milliken,
Steve Webster, and the others leaned back against the tree-trunk,
smoking clay pipes, or hugging their knees and chewing blades
of grass reflectively.

One man sat apart from the rest, gloomily puffing rings of smoke
into the air. After a while he lay down in the grass with his head
buried in his hat, sleeping to all appearances, while the others talked
and laughed; for he had no stories, though he put in an absent-minded word