So thought Robert Wynn afterwards, when he found the practice almost universal among the Canadians, and wondered that a domestic expedient so simple and serviceable should be confined to American housekeepers.
'Peter planted an orchard the first thing when we settled, and maples be plenty in the bush,' said Mrs. Logan, with unusual communicativeness.
'Yes, ma'am,' rejoined Andy suavely, and not in the least seeing the connection between maple trees and apple-pie. 'I wondher might I make bould to ax you for one of them sthrings? they're sich a curiosity to me.' And he had the cord of leathern pieces stowed away in one of the provision hampers before the others came in from the fields.
There they had seen the invariable abundance and wastefulness of bush-farming; no trace of the economy of land, which need perforce be practised in older countries, but an extravagance about the very zigzag fences, which unprofitably occupied, with a succession of triangular borderings, as much space as would make scores of garden beds. 'Nobody cares for the selvedges when there is a whole continent to cut from,' remarked Sam Holt, in a sententious way he had.
A yield of from twenty to five-and-twenty bushels per acre of wheat, and two hundred and fifty bushels of potatoes, were mentioned by the farmer as an average crop. His barns and root-house were full to repletion. Nothing of all this property was locked up: a latch on the door sufficed.
'I suppose, then, you have no rogues in the bush?' said Robert.
'Where everybody's as well off as another, there ain't no thievin',' was the pithy answer. 'A wolf now and then among our sheep, is all the robbers we has.'
After breakfast the bullocks were yoked afresh.
'I guess as how you've stumps before you to-day, a few,' said the farmer, coming out axe on shoulder. ''Tain't only a blaze up beyond your place at the Cedars, and not much better than a track of regulation width from the "Corner" to there. Only for that job of underbrushing I want to get finished, I'd be along with you to-day.'
He and his boy Benny walked with the travellers so far as their way lay together. The wife stood at the door, shading her eyes with her hand, till the lumbering waggon was lost to view round the edge of the woods.