to take an
account of stock. The autumn's work had already been well done. She had
carried berries enough to market to let her preserve her quinces and
damsons in sirups clear as sunshine, and make her tiny allowance of
currant and blackberry wines, where were innocently simulated the
flavors of rare vintages. Crook-necked squashes decked the tall
chimney-piece amid bunches of herbs and pearly strings of onions. She
and Vivia had gathered the ripened apples themselves, and now goodly
garlands of them hung from the attic-rafters, above the dried beans
whose blossoms had so sweetened June, and above last year's corn-bins.
That corn the first passing neighbor should take to mill and exchange a
portion of for cracked wheat; and as the flour-barrel still held out,
they would be tolerably well off for cereals, little Jane thought. They
had kept only one cow, and Tommy Low would attend to her for the sake of
his suppers,--suppers at which Vivia must forego her water-cresses now;
but Janet had a bed of mushrooms growing down-cellar, that, broiled and
buttered, were, she fancied, quite equal to venison-steaks. The hens, of
course, must be sacrificed, all but a dozen of them; for, as there was
no fresh meat for them in winter, they wouldn't lay, and would be only a
dead weight, she said to herself, as, with her apron thrown over her
neck, she stood watching them, finger on lip. However, that would give
them poultry all through the holidays. Then there were the pigs to be
killed on halves by a neighbor, as almost everything else out-doors had
now to be done; and when that was accomplished, she found no time to
call her soul her own while making her sausage and bacon and souse and
brawn. Part of the pork would produce salt fish, without which what
farm-house would stand?--and with old hucklebones, her potatoes and
parsnips, those ruby beets and golden carrots, there was many a Julien
soup to be had. Jones's-root, bruised and boiled, made a chocolate as
good as Spanish. Instead of ginger, there were the wild caraway-seeds
growing round the house. If she could only contrive some sugar and some
vanilla-beans, she would be well satisfied to open her campaign. But as
there had been for weeks only one single copper cent and two
postage-stamps in the house, that seemed an impossibility. Hereupon an
idea seized little Jane, and for several days she was busy in a
mysterious rummage. Garrets and closets surrendered their hoards to her;
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