CHAPTER XI
LEAFING
NO, you never went “leafing”—not unless you are simon-pure country-bred. You do not know what the word means. You cannot find it in the unabridged dictionary—not in the sense in which I am using it. But there are many good words we country people use that are not, perhaps, in the dictionary.
And what do I mean by “leafing”? Get down that bundle of meal sacks, hitch into the one-horse hay-rig, throw in the rakes, and come. We are going into the woods for pig-bedding, for leaves to keep the pigs dry and warm this winter!
You never went after leaves for the pigs? Perhaps you never even had a pig. But a pig is worth having, if only to see the comfort he takes in the big bed of dry leaves you give him in the sunny corner of his pen. And if leafing had no other reward, the thought of the snoozing, snoring pig buried to his winking snout in the bed, would give joy and zest enough to the labor.
But leafing, like every other humble labor, has its own rewards, not the least of them being the leaves themselves and the getting of them!
We jolt across the bumpy field, strike into the back wood-road, and turn off upon an old stumpy track over which cord wood was carted years ago. Here in the hollow at the foot of a high wooded hill, the winds have whirled the oak and maple leaves into drifts almost knee-deep.
We are off the main road, far into the heart of the woods. We straddle stumps; bend down saplings; stop while the horse takes a bite of sweet birch; tack and tip and tumble and back through the tight squeezes between the trees; and finally, after a prodigious amount of whoa-ing and oh-ing and squealing and screeching, we land right side up and so headed that we can start the load out toward the open road.