He looked depressed, but merely said that Halstead and I might as well begin going to the district school with the girls.
In the summer we usually had to work on the farm during good weather, as boys of our age usually did in those days; but it was now too wet to hoe corn or to do other work in the field.

We could do little except to wait for fair weather.

Addison, who was older than I, did not go back to school and spent much of the time poring over a pile of old magazines up in the attic.
Halstead and I had been going to school for four or five days when on coming home one afternoon we found a great stir of activity round the west barn.

Timbers and boards had been fetched from an old shed on the "Aunt Hannah lot"-- a family appurtenance of the home farm--and lay heaped on the ground.

Two of the hired men were laying foundation stones along the side of the barn.