The Old Homestead

by Ann S. Stephens

"True enough," cried one of the girls, "An old married man! why don't he stay home with his wife and children? Nobody wants him."

"I declare to man!" said Salina, "it made my blood bile to see him sneaking about with both hands in his pockets, whistling to himself, as if nobody was by; oh, I hate a constable like rank poison. They always put me in mind of old times—when I was a young gal a year or two ago."

Here the girls looked at each other; none of them remembered the time when she had appeared a day younger than now.

"Well, as I was a saying, when I was a gal, my father and mother moved from old Connecticut into the Lackawana valley in Pennsylvania, with ten little children, all younger than I was. They had lost everything, and went out into that dark, piny region to begin life agin.

"Well, they got a patch of wild land, partly on credit, built a log-house, and went to work. Before the year was out father died, and we found it hard dragging to get along without crops, and deep in debt. We gave up everything to pay store debts, and should have felt as rich as kings, if we could only have raised what the law allowed us. But we had no barrel of beef and pork, which even the law leaves to a poor family, but we lived on rye and injun, with a little molasses when we couldn't get milk.

"The law allowed us two pigs and a cow with her calf. Our cow was a grand good critter, capital for milk, and gentle as a lamb—you don't know how the children took to her, and well they might—she more than half supported them.

"Marm did her best for the children, and I worked as hard as she did, spinning and carding wool, which she wove into cloth on a hand-loom.

"Well, in a year or two the calf grew into a fine heifer, and we calculated on having milk from her after a little. So we began to fat up the old cow, though I hain't no idea that we should ever have made up our minds to kill her.

"There was some debts, still, but we had given up everything once, and neither marm nor I thought of any body's coming on us agin. So we were proud enough of our two cows, and as long as the children had plenty of milk, never thought of wanting beef, and the old cow might have lived to this time for what I know if we'd been left to ourselves."

Here Salina's voice became disturbed, and the girls settled themselves in an attitude of profound attention.