In subsequent seasons when the sun shone nearly every day during haying time we used it less. But when thundershowers or occasional fogs or heavy dew came it was always open to us to put the grass through the haymaker. In a wet season it gave us a delightful feeling of independence. "Let it rain," the old Squire used to say with a smile. "We've got the haymaker."
Late in September the first fall after we built the haymaker, there came a heavy gale that blew off fully one half the apple crop—Baldwins, Greenings, Blue Pearmains and Spitzenburgs. Since we could barrel none of the windfalls as number one fruit, that part of our harvest, more than a thousand bushels, seemed likely to prove a loss. The old Squire would never make cider to sell; and we young folks at the farm, particularly Theodora and Ellen, disliked exceedingly to dry apples by hand.
But there lay all those fair apples. It seemed such a shame to let them go to waste that the matter was on all our minds. At the breakfast table one morning Ellen remarked that we might use the haymaker for drying apples if we only had some one to pare and slice them.
"But I cannot think of any one," she added hastily, fearful lest she be asked to do the work evenings.
"Nor can I," Theodora added with equal haste, "unless some of those paupers at the town farm could be set about it."
"Poor paupers!" Addison exclaimed, laughing. "Too bad!"
"Lazy things, I say!" grandmother exclaimed. "There's seventeen on the farm, and eight of them are abundantly able to work and earn their keep."
"Yes, if they only had the wit," the old Squire said; he was one of the selectmen that year, and he felt much solicitude for the town poor.
"Perhaps they've wit enough to pare apples," Theodora remarked hopefully.
"Maybe," the old Squire said in doubt. "So far as they are able they ought to work, just as those who have to support them must work."