There was a big
cavern behind the kitchen chimney, which gradually became filled with
these harvests, and on winter evenings they were brought forth and
cracked with a hammer on the hearth-stone.
The wide field, or croft, which sloped from the house to the wood was
thickly grown with mullein-stalks, against which I waged war with an
upper section of one of my father's old broken canes, for I took them
for giants, and stubborn, evil-minded enchanters. I slew them by
scores; but I could make no way against the grasshoppers, which jumped
against my bare legs and pricked them. There were wasps, too; one of
them stung Una on the lower lip as she was climbing over a rail-fence.
Her lip at once assumed a Bourbon contour, and I reached the
conclusion, by some tacit syllogism of infancy, that the rail-fence
was at least half to blame for the catastrophe, and always carefully
avoided it. I likewise avoided the wasps; a certain trick they have of
giving a hitch to their after-parts as they walk along always struck
me as being obviously diabolical.
When the snows came, two and three feet deep, we got out the family
sled from its summer lodging in the barn and went forth, muffled in
interminable knit tippets and other woollen armor, to coast down the
long slope. Our father sat in front with the reins in his hands and
his feet thrust out to steer, and away we went clinging fast behind
him. Sometimes we swept triumphantly to the bottom; at other times we
would collide with some hidden obstacle, and describe each a separate
trajectory into the snow-banks.
Pages:
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53