nd on the pit of my stomach. The
feeling was not to be described, but I did not know homesickness was
the name for it.

Samantha consoled me as well as she could with colored beads to
string, and a barrel of kittens out in the barn. I felt a little
better at dinner time, for the dinner was very nice; but my spirits
were still low.

Julia, the other young lady, was not very fond of little girls, and
had no box of trinkets as Samantha had, or, at any rate, did not show
any to me. She seemed to be always talking privacy with her sister, or
with cousin Lydia, and always sending me out of the room. Not that she
ever told me, in so many words, to go away--but just as if I didn't
know what she meant!

"Don't you want to go out in the barn and hunt for eggs?" said she.

No, I certainly didn't. If I had wanted to I should have found it out
without her speaking of it. But I was only a little girl; so I had to
go, and couldn't answer back. The neighbors' children were few and far
between; and though I strolled about for hours behind cousin Joseph
Tenney and the hired man, there were times when I liked to see what
was going on in the kitchen, and it was vexing to hear Julia say,--

"If I was a little girl about your age, I never should get tired of
looking at that speckled bossy out in the barn."

Indeed! I almost wished she had to be fastened into the stall a while,
just to _see_ if she wouldn't get tired of that speckled bossy.

But when the time came to make my cheese, I had a right to stay in
the house. Cousin Lydia let me look on, and see it all done. First, I
picked the pigweed and tansy, or how could she have made the cheese?
Then she strained some milk into a pan, and squeezed the green juices
through a thin cloth. After that she put in a little rennet with a
spoon.

"There," said she, "isn't that a pretty color? Watch it a few minutes,
and you will see it grow thick, like blanc-mange, and that will be
curd."

Then she made some white curd in another pan, without any green
juice. After the curd "came," it was very interesting to cross it off
with a pudding-stick, and this she let me do myself. Next morning she
drained the curd in a cloth over a cheese-basket, and put on a stone
to press out the whey. When it was drained dry enough, she let me cut
it up in the chopping-tray, and she mixed the two curds together, the
green and the white, salted them, and put them in that cunning hoop,
and then set the hoop in the