"You will not find the family rude and rough, as some country people are. The girls are bright and intelligent, though full of fun and frolic," she added. "You will be sure to enjoy yourselves, and should there come a rainy day you will find plenty to amuse you in their quaint though comfortable farmhouse."
CHAPTER XXIV.
The same comfortable carriage that carried them to Montague Bridge was now travelling in an opposite direction, and the young strangers viewed with pleasure the luxuriant fields that surrounded the many farmhouses, and which promise such abundant harvest to their owners. The drive proved a very delightful one indeed. In consequence of the many stoppings they made to regale themselves with the sweet wild berries that grew in abundance by the roadside, the afternoon was drawing to a close when the little party reached the McDonald farmhouse.
The hardy pioneer who had first settled on the land that was owned and tilled by his descendants, must have selected the site on which he built his first log-house with an eye to the picturesque and beautiful, for no other spot for miles around had such a far reaching and delightful prospect. As time went by, and the land gave forth its increase, the log-house was supplemented by a more pretentious structure, that was "built on," the original apartments serving for kitchens, outhouses and other necessary buildings; and as this process of erection went on at later periods, the farmhouse was large and many sided, and possessed many conveniences that farmers are apt to consider unnecessary. But the honest pride that the present owner had in the well-tilled acres extended to the buildings upon it, and neatness and thrift were everywhere present. No hingeless gates propped with sticks met the eye; no broken-down doors were to be seen on his barns; a master hand ruled the land, and his rule brought prosperity and happiness.
The inmates of the farmhouse were such as you would expect to find amidst such surroundings—active and intelligent, and not wholly given up to the pursuit of the things which perish with the using, for the young people, at least, found time for intellectual pleasures that would have been considered in some farmhouses a wilful waste of time and means.
The family consisted of two young girls well up in their teens; Tom, a lively boy of twelve, and Dora, a plump little miss of six; and coming after these, in her own estimation, was the mother, a model of neatness and good-nature, a fine dairy woman, whose interests were, of course, centred in her cows and poultry yard, and she was generally found somewhere near the vicinity of her particular treasures.
Then there was Phebe, the strong-armed. A very important member of the family was she, as you would soon learn if you made any stay in the farmhouse. She it was who solved problems by the aid of washboard and scrubbing-brush, and the tempting meals she sent out of the kitchen would have delighted the heart of an epicure. But to see Phebe at her best, one should be at the farm during the busy haying season. It was her pride and delight to be considered "as good as any man," and she could "pitch a load" with a dexterity that even the two farm hands could not equal. These latter were brothers, and lived in a snug cottage a few rods away, said cottage being kept, like everything else on the farm, as "neat as a new pin," by Joe's wife, a brisk little woman, whose head scarcely reached to her husband's shoulder.
Another inmate of the farmhouse should have a paragraph all to herself, for "the grandmother" cannot be described in one brief line. Although she had long since passed the allotted span of life, yet age had not dimmed the lustre of her keen grey eyes nor dulled her faculties; and though she could no longer take an active part in the management of the household, yet from her corner in the pleasant room a potent spell reached out and overshadowed the members of the household. No crowned monarch on his throne ever ruled over such deferential and loyal subjects as those that here yielded to her benign sway. Not that she required it of them—it was graciously accorded her as to the patriarchs of old, and she seemed to belong to a holier age. Her soft white hair fell over her brow, and was drawn back under a large white frilled cap that surrounded her head like a halo, and the placid countenance that beamed beneath it inspired a feeling of reverence. She was called by all the household "the grandmother," and was dearly loved by them all; but the filial love of her son was far above that usually accorded to aged mothers, and it was easy to see how it warmed her heart.
Such was the household into which our young travellers were ushered about five o'clock on a beautiful summer day.