in fertilizing the farm lands; then came the
first floor, where the stalls for horses, oxen, and cows lined the walls
on either side. Then came the second floor, where hay was kept, and to
reach this a bridge forty feet long was built on stone piers ten feet in
height, sloping up from the ground to the second story. Over the easy
slope of this bridge the full haycarts were driven, to add their several
burdens to the golden haymows. High at the top was an enormous grain
room, where mounds of yellow corn-ears reached from floor to ceiling;
and at the back was a great window opening on Massabesic Pond and
Knights' Hill, with the White Mountains towering blue or snow-capped in
the distance. There was an old-fashioned, list-bottomed, straight-backed
Shaker chair in front of the open window, a chair as uncomfortable as
Shaker doctrines to the daughter of Eve, and there Susanna often sat
with her sewing or mending, Sue at her feet building castles out of
corn-cobs, plaiting the husks into little mats, or taking out basting
threads from her mother's work.

"My head feels awfully undressed without my curls, Mardie," she said.
"I'm most afraid Fardie won't like the looks of me; do you think we
ought to have asked him before we shingled me?--He does _despise_
un-pretty things so!"

"I think if we had asked him he would have said, 'Do as you think
best.'"

"He always says that when he doesn't care what you do," observed Sue,
with one of her startling bursts of intuition. "Sister Martha has a
printed card on the wall in the children's dining-room, and I've got to
learn all the poetry on it because I need it worse than any of the
others:--

"What we deem good order, we're willing to state,
Eat hearty and decent, and clear out your plate;
Be thankful to heaven for what we receive,
And not make a mixture or compound to leave.

"We often find left on the same China dish,
Meat, apple sauce, pickle, brown bread and minced fish:
Another's replenished with butter and cheese,
With pie, cake, and toast, perhaps, added to these."

"You say it very nicely," commended Susanna.

"There's more:--

"Now if any virtue in this can be shown,
By peasant, by lawyer, or king on the throne;
We freely will forfeit whatever we've said,
And call it a virtue to waste meat and bread."

"There's a great deal to learn when you're being a Shaker," sighed Sue,
as she finished her rhyme.