The folk of Furry Farm

by K. F. Purdon

When this you see,

Then think of me, D. G.

So Kitty was not much the wiser about what had happened, when she got this from Dan. But not long afterwards, she got word that it was in America he was, and had good pay there. And then no one seemed to know much more about Dan.

It wasn’t too long after this, that old Dick Dempsey, himself, Kitty’s father, took and died on them; “harished out of the world,” some said, by the wife he had, that could never think anything right that he did; or any one else, for that matter, except herself. There’s a power of people like Mrs. Dempsey.

It was the woe day for poor Kitty, when her father was gone, and she and the mother left to manage for themselves. By this time all the others were married, or gone off to America. And of course they all said among themselves, that the farm that had reared the whole of them, and had given snug fortunes to every girl that married out of it, ought to be able to keep Kitty and the mother in the greatest of comfort.

So it should too; only there chanced to be a few bad seasons, when the grass was short ... or the rain didn’t come till it wasn’t wanted, and so the crops got spoilt in the saving. Every one else about Ardenoo was in the same boat. Except for this: Mrs. Dempsey was of the opinion that they were all fools but herself. That kept her down worse. She would take no advice. She thought she knew better than men that had been farming all their lives, while she had been rearing chickens and making butter. Her great idea was, to spend nothing. She grudged doing that, more than anything.

Now it is well known that the best fertiliser you can use on land is, money. If you treat your land well, it will treat you well; a thing that is true of more than farming.

But with Mrs. Dempsey it was take all and give nothing; above all, for labour. She would keep no help for the house. So it was Kitty! here; and Kitty! there, from dawn to dark. Kitty was never done. She was the most willing little creature you could find in a day’s walk; as good as ever was wet with water. But what avails all one girl can do on a farm? with poultry and milk, turkeys and pigs, and then be expected as well to do haymaking, or the thinning of turnips, or dropping potatoes, and I don’t know what all besides. It was only folly to think any one pair of hands could overtake all that.

And here again was another reason why poor Kitty was not to have her chance of a bit of sport like another. At first, as I explained, she had to step one side, in order that the sisters that were older, the “ones that were next the door,” as they are called at Ardenoo, could have their fling, there were so many of them there. And secondly she had to stop at home now, because they were not there! no one in the place, only the old mother and Kitty. So that is how she never had any other “coort” except Dan; and of course then she thought all the more of him; the same as a hen with only one chicken. She’ll fuss and cluck as much for it as if she had the whole clutch.

Girls that are allowed a bit of liberty, the way they can be putting a whole lot of boys through their hands, as some do, are better off in a way than Kitty was with Dan.