“Why, Clinton, you are a carpenter, sure enough!” said Whistler. “I should think you might almost build a house; I mean a real house, not a bird-house.”
Clinton smiled at this rather extravagant estimate of his mechanical skill, and led the way towards the barn, through which he conducted his cousin, from the cellar almost to the ridge-pole. The hayloft was very large, and was nearly filled with new-mown hay, the fragrance of which was delightful. Swallows were darting in and out of the great door, and gayly twittering among the lofty rafters, where they had made their nests. A large quantity of unthreshed grain, bound up in sheaves, was stacked away on the main floor, in one end of the barn.
“There’s a good lot of straw,” said Whistler, as they passed by the grain.
“And something besides straw, too; that is rye,” replied Clinton.
“Is it rye?” said Whistler. “Well, I’m just green enough not to know straw from grain, or one kind of grain from another. Father told me I should make myself so verdant that the cows would chase me, and I don’t know but that he was right.”
“They laugh about country people being green, when they go to the city,” said Clinton; “but I guess they don’t appear much worse than city folks sometimes do in the country. I don’t mean you, though,” he added; “for you haven’t done anything very bad yet.”
Whistler broke off a head of rye, and found concealed beneath the bearded points several hard, plump kernels, that had a sweet and pleasant taste. Following his cousin, he then visited the pig-pen, which was behind the barn, and connected with a portion of the barn cellar. Half a dozen fat porkers were lazily stretched about, in shady places, presenting one of those familiar groups that, if they do not appeal to the artist’s sense of the beautiful, do appeal most forcibly to the plain farmer’s sense of lard and “middlings.” If not picturesque, they are decidedly baconesque, which some people consider much better.
“Now you must go and see my biddies,” said Clinton; and he led the way to a large hen-coop, near the piggery.
“Are these your fowls?” inquired Whistler.
“Yes, they are all mine,” replied his cousin. “Father gave me all of his fowls, five years ago, and I have managed them just as I pleased ever since. I have to find their food, and I have all their eggs and chickens. Even the eggs mother uses she has to buy of me.”