Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1914 edition. Excerpt: ... Yourself and the Neighbours YOURSELF AND HERSELF I. IN BAREFOOT TIME FROM the outshot bed adjoining the kitchen fire--a bed that never contained less than three or more than five--you, because you had reached the care-burdened age of eight, tumbled just at the screek o' day, when your mother, the first in the house to stir, was poking last night's coals from the ashes in which they had been raked, building them on the hearth, and piling black turf around them--to make a big, roaring, blazing fire on which would boil the pot for your morning's stirabout. When you had carried in a creel of turf for your mother, and brought her a go of water from the garden well, and she had rewarded you with a fadge of unbuffered oaten bread--surreptitiously, because it would never do for either your father, or the bunch who were still in the outshot bed sleeping with one eye open, to know--you took a grown man's stick in your fist and drove Branny and Spreckly to the Daisy Park, there to herd them from the corn patch till a late breakfast hour. If the morning was a frosty one, 'twas biting indeed for your poor bare feet; and you must be ever moving to keep the little feet from crying. Or, if you dared rest a while, you had to do the goose--one foot drawn under you, and one only on the inhospitable ground. And you favoured them turn and turn about. If it was a morning that poured torrents of rain, or one that breathed a stepmother's breath from the north, you brought old sacks and a couple of sticks, and, with the aid of a friendly whinbush on the fence side, made a haven that was truly a heaven. What exquisite joy to watch from your Elysian shelter, where you hugged yourself in selfish comfort, the blackheads, and cunnellans, and heather-tops and long...
