CHAPTER VI.
To be a well-favoured man is the gift of fortune; but to write and read comes by nature.
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.
Little could be done in the winter.

The days were short and full of employment; all the more for Will's absence.

What with threshing wheat and oats, foddering cattle, and dressing flax, driving to mill, cutting wood, and clearing snow, there was no time for Virgil during the few hours of daylight; hardly time to repeat a Latin verb.

The evenings were long and bright, and the kitchen cosy.

But there were axe-helves to dress out, and oars, and ox-yokes; and corn to shell, and hemp to hackle; and at which ever corner of the fireplace Winthrop might set himself down, a pair of little feet would come pattering round him, and petitions, soft but strong, to cut an apple, or to play jackstraws, or to crack hickory nuts, or to roast chestnuts, were sure to be preferred; and if none of these, or if these were put off, there was still too much of that sweet companionship to suit with the rough road to learning.