I defy any village in Britain to turn out such girls--plenty of rosy-cheeked gigglers--but the natural refinement and intelligence of these little damsels astonishes me.' Well, the old man died suddenly, as I said, and we were all very sorry, and the school was broken up.

But he had taught us all to write fairly and to keep accounts, to read and spell decently, and to know a little geography.

It wasn't a great deal, but what we knew we knew well, and I often think of what he said, now it's too late, we ought to have made better use of it.

After school broke up father said Jim and I knew quite as much as was likely to be any good to us, and we must work for our living like other people.

We'd always done a pretty fair share of that, and our hands were hard with using the axe and the spade, let alone holding the plough at odd times and harrowing, helping father to kill and brand, and a lot of other things, besides getting up while the stars were in the sky so as to get the cows milked early, before it was time to go to school.
All this time we had lived in a free kind of way--we wanted for nothing.
We had plenty of good beef, and a calf now and then.